Introduction

When the PLP solver plans flows on vessels, it can identify options directly from the available GSIS schedules. To plan the inland flows, no specific schedules are available, which means the inland flows must be handled using a separate logic.

To simply options, and maintain a reasonable data quality, origin and destination options are consolidated to pools and flows are optimised on virtual pool to pool corridors. The inland corridor options are managed using the dedicated PLP Inland Corridors screen, which is a repository of the pool level inland corridors options, with related corridor properties, such us capacity, cut-off deadlines, transit cost and transit time (see PLP Inland Corridors).

In order to suggest inland flows in ROCK, the planned pool to pool flows are translated into site-specific OTTs. This requires a process to select the most-likely site within the pool for both origin and destination of the corridor flow.

From Pool flows to OTTs

To generate inland OTTs in ROCK, the following steps describe the end-to-end process from flows are created and OTTs are defined.

1. PLP generates inland flows on pool-to-pool level using the options available from PLP Inland Corridors screen.
2. For each inland flow between pools, the most-used site to site flow is identified, using historical data sourced from FBR.
3. Using the identified site-pair, the flow is set in the output as a site-to-site flow, same as flows on oceans.
4. As Scenario is promoted in ROCK, all flows are translated to OTTs and loaded into ROCK

Calculating the Most-Used Site-level Pair

Using a list of all site level corridors and historical flows to each pool pair, the most-used corridor is selected by calculating a usage score having largest container movements. This corridor is then chosen as the corridor contender for moving the boxes, and will be used exclusively by PLP. For example, for a pool pair from DEBRV to DEREN, the corridor having the highest container movements is calculated and chosen based on historical RKEM data. From below ranked list, the result would be DEBRVTM to DEREN03.

Examples and Outcomes

PLP will create, modify and cancel existing inland OTTs that also respects the locking settings on the existing OTTs. Below overview shows some examples on how Inland Flow will behave under specific conditions.

Example of PLP planning 40HIGH* Flows

In this example, PLP wants to plan an inland flow of 254 units of 40HIGH* equipment from the pool DEBRV to pool DEREN on the same week. The pool-to-pool corridor includes the below specifications:

The pre-calculated site corridor contender for the above is calculated an identified as DEBRVTM to DEREN03. In ROCK there are already three planned inland OTTs between the pools. First OTT is completely locked, second OTT is locked at equipment type level on 40 high containers and last OTT is not locked.

As PLP wants to plan 254 containers on week 40, of which 200 containers (from two of the OTTs) are already locked, PLP will need to review the unlocked OTT. By comparing corridor on the unlocked OTT (R18216262) with the PLP calculated contender, it is determined that they are not the same. To handle this problem, PLP cancels the existing unlocked OTT and created a new OTT on the contender corridor with the remaining volume. The result is summarised in the below table.