Integrated Containership Stowage Planning: A Methodology for Coordinating Containership Stowage Plan and Terminal Yard Operations

Abstract

This study aims at achieving the optimized stowage plan based on the containers’ distribution in the yard and space structure of the ship by integrating the containership stowage problem with the block relocation and loading problem. The containership’s physical structure contributes to a variety of stowage plans, and the containers’ distribution in the yard restrains the container loading sequence. The integrated containership stowage model is established, considering irregular format ship configuration, the weight of each individual container and the stability constraints by limiting the range of related indicators to strengthen real-world scalability. Commercial managers can solve small-scale instances to reduce handling moves in the terminal yard by using the mathematical model, but they cannot solve large-scale instances in the real world. Thus, this study presents a heuristic algorithm to coordinate containership stowage and terminal yard operations. Numerical experiments compare the optimal solutions using the heuristic algorithm to that by CPLEX and GUROBI in small-scale instances, and the respective results are displayed in two stages using the heuristic algorithm. Computational results show that the proposed algorithm can provide the industry with decision support by dramatically and quickly reducing the relocations in the yard and the shifts in the containership, helping the container terminal keep a sustainable development process.