A parallel computing model for container terminal logistics

Existing planning and scheduling solutions for container terminal logistics systems (CTLS) are not sufficient today due to the highly complexity and uncertain environments. This paper reviews the advantages and shortcomings of the existing solutions and proposes a container terminal conceptual parallel computing model for scheduling and execution based on multi-processor systems. It is built on the computational architecture and fundamental principles of distributed, cooperative, parallel, heterogeneous, and reconfigurable computation in essence. The proposed approach is demonstrated and validated by investigating the stress testing, tailor-made processor affinity, load migration and load balancing of a typical container terminal logistics service case with comprehensive computational experiments.