The storage location assignment problem for outbound containers in a maritime terminal

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Abstract

This paper addresses the storage location assignment problem for outbound containers. The problem is decomposed into two stages. The yard bays and the amount of locations in each yard bay, which will be assigned to the containers bounded for different ships, are determined in the first stage. The exact storage location for each container is determined in the second stage. The problem in the first stage is solved by a mixed integer programming model, while a hybrid sequence stacking algorithm is applied to solve the problem in the second stage. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective and efficient in solving the storage location assignment problem for outbound containers.

Introduction

A container terminal is an inter-modal interface in the global transportation network. Containers are stored temporarily to account for the differences in arrival times of the sea and land carriers. Storage location assignment for arriving containers is important in improving the efficiency of container handling and reducing the turnaround time of a ship.

Inbound and outbound container operations are different. Inbound containers arrive predictably in large batches at yard, but depart one by one in an unpredictable order when they are claimed. Outbound containers depart predictably but arrive in a random order. They must be loaded according to a rigid ship storage plan, in order to maintain the stability of the ship, and satisfy the loading requirement that is specified by destination and size of containers.

This paper focuses on the operational decision making problem in stacking outbound containers. The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we give a brief review of previous work in the area of container storage location assignment. Then a detailed problem description is given and a solution approach is outlined in Section 3. With this approach, the problem is modeled and solved in two stages: 4 Yard bay allocation for outbound containers, 5 Determine the storage locations for outbound containers for the first and the second stages, respectively. Computational experiments are conducted for realistic settings and the results are reported in Section 6. Finally, in Section 7 we present our conclusions and perspectives.

Section snippets

Literature review

Dekker et al. (2006) explored different stacking policies for containers in automated terminals by means of simulation. A comprehensive overview of stacking policies used in practice is provided. Zhang et al. (2003) studied the storage space allocation problem in the storage yards of terminals. Both inbound containers and outbound containers are considered, and are allowed to be mixed up in one block. They decomposed the space allocation problem into two levels. In the first level, the total

Problem description

We assume that yard cranes and trucks are used as container handling equipment in the yard. When an outside truck delivers an outbound container to the yard, a yard crane picks it up and stacks it in a yard bay. During the loading operation, a yard crane picks up the container and puts it on a yard truck that transfers it to a quay crane.

Every ship which is loaded at a terminal has a storage plan. The shipping line makes a rough plan based on container categories, which is sent to the terminal.

Yard bay allocation for outbound containers

This section discusses the yard bay allocation problem in the first stage. A mixed integer programming (MIP) model is formulated to solve this problem. The yard bays and the amount of space in each yard bay that will be allocated to store outbound container in each period of the planning horizon are determined.

The following assumptions are made:

  • (1)

    Since the scheduling problem of the handling system is beyond the scope of this paper, we assume that there is enough resource to handle the outbound

Determine the storage locations for outbound containers

The first stage determines the space in each yard bay that can be allocated to outbound containers for different ships in each planning period. The remaining problem is to determine the storage location to stack the next arriving container among several empty slots in the pre-assigned yard bays. The objective is to store outbound containers for the final storage layout from which an efficient loading sequence can be constructed.

Experiments

In this section, the proposed storage location assignment method is evaluated using practical data generated from a typical container terminal in Shanghai. The approach is coded in Visual C++ and run on a personal computer with duo CPU @ 2 GHz and 2 GB RAM. The mixed integer programming model is solved using CPLEX 10.0, a commercial software package.

Conclusions

The storage location assignment problem for outbound containers in a maritime terminal is directly related to the handling efficiency of the loading operations and is difficult to solve due to the random arrival of the outbound containers. In this study, the problem is decomposed into two stages. The yard bays and the amount of locations in each yard bay that will be assigned to the containers bounded for different ships are determined in the first stage. A mixed integer programming model is

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project number: 70802040, 70771065), the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program, No. 2009AA043000), and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Project number: 08DZ2210102)

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