Agent Technology Supports Inter-Organizational Planning in the Port

The Port of Rotterdam is a key container transshipment hub for Europe. Inland container shipping is important to connect the hinterland (40% market share). Barges visit several terminals per round-trip through the Port, thus requiring a proper planning support – to avoid planning problems such as double-bookings. A pilot version of an inter-organizational system has been build, titled APPROACH. This paper describes an industry workshop where a gamesetting was used to evaluate the current manual planning practices with the APPROACH outcome – and delivered interesting findings; both for actual implementation of the system as well as it unveiled issues for further research.