Identification and Prioritization of Causes of Halt and Lag in Container Handling Operation

The present research has been conducted to identify and prioritize the inveterate Causes of halt and lag creation in container loading/unloading operation in Mina Salman container terminal (hereinafter referred to as MSCT) by use of FMEA model added to which SIPOC model, Pareto analysis and cause and effect diagram have been applied as well. For the purpose of this research, the daily census of MSCT operations including halts and lags in loading/unloading operations and their relevant causes as well as the census of vessels traffic to the port during 8 months commencing from 21st March, 2011 has been used as the main resource of data gathering. The identified main factors with their pertinent scores have been prioritized as deficiency and malfunction of quay horizontal transportation equipment (666.4), deficiency and malfunction of quay vertical transportation equipment (632.8), inelasticity of container yard (512), Document incompleteness (459), Incompetency of unloading equipment (438.72) and Financial and administrative matters (438.125) respectively. Based on the obtained results, technical deficiency and malfunction of quay horizontal and vertical transportation equipments possess the highest number of risk priority while document incompleteness has the least number.