Minimizing overstowage in master bay plans of large container ships

Abstract

This study proposes a mathematical model that minimizes overstowage in class-based master bay plans for large container ships. With the advantage of an underlying multi-commodity network structure, solutions are obtained within reasonable computation time in the case of 14,000-TEU ships. In addition, changeable bay configuration patterns due to different container sizes—an important but rarely discussed issue—are efficiently addressed by adding specially designed arcs and side constraints. Our model can support container stowage planners by providing a flexible and efficient approach for allocating ship slots to containers of different lengths when preparing class-based master bay plans for large container ships.