The goal of this paper is to introduce a classification scheme for
the storage yard operations at container terminals, to review recent
literature and to identify new avenues for academic research
based on current trends and developments. We distinguish between
the following main decision problems that arise in the storage
yard operations: (1) yard design, including material handling
equipment (MHE) selection and storage yard layout; (2) storage
space assignment to containers; (3) MHE dispatching and routing
to serve the storage and/or retrieval requests; (4) optimizing the
reshuffling of containers. These topics will be treated in this order
in this paper, since from a yard design and usage point of view,
these aspects follow each other more or less in chronological order;
a yard must be designed before it can be operated, and a container’s
storage locations must be assigned before equipment can
be dispatched to put it there. All decisions potentially influence
each other mutually, and therefore papers that address this decision
interaction will be treated once all separate decision problems
have been clearly outlined.