Title: Planning and optimising manpower management in a transshipment container terminal

Authors: Massimo Di Francesco; Antonio Manca; Simone Zanda; Paola Zuddas

Addresses: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy ' Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy ' Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy ' Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

Abstract: Manpower management is a complex problem for transshipment container terminals, because different requirements must be taken into account in the short-term plan to properly assign workers to shifts, tasks and operations, while accounting for some decisions already made in the long-term plan. An optimisation model is formulated to discuss the decision-making ability of a real terminal in dealing with this problem. The experimentation shows that its current policy on the short-term plan is effective, but some improvements can be obtained if unnecessary restrictions were removed from the long-term plan and some changes are accepted in the current modus operandi of the terminal. [Received 16 February 2015; Revised 4 January 2016; Accepted 13 June 2016]

Keywords: manpower planning; human resource management; HRM; transshipment container terminals; TCTs; maritime logistics; optimisation; decision making; manpower management.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIE.2016.081020

European Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2016 Vol.10 No.6, pp.777 - 793

Published online: 15 Dec 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article