Heuristic Berth Scheduling for Dual-Service Petrochemical Tank Terminals: A Field-Driven Approach to Managing ETA Uncertainty

This study aims to develop and validate a heuristic rule-based scheduling approach for a dual-service petrochemical terminal that manages both domestic and international vessels under shared resource constraints. A qualitative case study employing a practitioner-researcher approach was adopted, using operational data from 538 vessel movements over a 24-month period (August 2023-July 2024). The proposed framework, termed the Hybrid Scheduling Regime, comprises four key heuristic rules: (1) Watchlist to filter vessels with unstable ETAs; (2) Conditional Nomination for domestic vessels subject to laycan and buffer constraints; (3) Buffer Slot/Time (2-6 hours) to absorb temporal deviations; and (4) ETA-based First-Come-First-Served (ETA-FCFS) with a stability threshold to ensure fairness. Field implementation over a 6-12-month period demonstrated significant operational enhancements, including approximately 30-50 percent reductions in planning time, fewer scheduling conflicts, and markedly improved schedule stability. The findings indicate that a transparent, rule-based regime can effectively mitigate the adverse effects of ETA uncertainty without requiring complex mathematical models, offering a practical solution for dual-service terminal management.