الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
At container terminal storage yards, yard cranes are used to unload the containers from the trucks, store them in stacks within the terminal yard then lift the containers and load them onto the trucks for their release to customers. If at any point in time, there was no yard crane available to load/unload containers or all the yard cranes are busy serving other trucks, then any new trucks arriving will have to join a service queue. Since most of the container flows occur at the yard side, consequently, yard operations are the bottleneck for the container terminal. Also yard cranes are the most expensive resources in a container terminal; therefore, a key objective would be to optimize yard crane utilization by deploying the minimum number of yard cranes required. Hence, yard planners are required to take into consideration the availability of yard crane capacity to ensure that yard cranes are neither under-utilized nor overloaded.
In this study the problem of determining the optimum number of yard cranes required in a container terminal is illustrated. A mathematical programming model is adopted incorporating constraints allowing the deployment of cranes and taking into account the distances between storage blocks. The model is solved and verified using the LINGO software. This model is applied to the Alexandria Container & Cargo Handling Company to evaluate the number of their fleet of RTGCs (Rubber-tired gantry cranes) and it suggested the minimum number of yard cranes sufficient to complete the workload of demand. The outcome of this model application is highly satisfactory.