Impact of service policies on terminal gate efficiency: a simulation approach

Congestion at terminal gates is a significant issue that many ports are dealing with. The port of Songkhla, which serves as the main seaport in southern Thailand, has been confronted with this issue, together with an increase in the number of trucks over the last five years. This study aims to investigate alternatives for improving service operations at the terminal gate, including gate lane expansion, queueing policy in exit-gate sharing, and work process reorganization. A simulation model was developed to analyze the queueing performance: truck queue length and gate waiting time. Scenarios analysis was performed and compared to the baseline model to investigate the impact of proposed approaches on gate performance. The simulation results confirm that a gate-sharing policy can alleviate congestion at a certain truck arrival rate. The method of reorganizing work processes by separating customs work from gate operations and placing it in a new work station appears most appealing. It produces a significant improvement in congestion, comparable to the performance of the gate lane expansion approach while requiring less investment.