Study on vessel slot planning problem in stowage process of outbound containers

Abstract

In this study, the vessel slot planning problem for outbound containers is discussed which is crucial in the process of stowage planning in a container terminal. By carefully studying the operational flow of vessel stowage and practicing in related departments, a decision problem for slot planning is proposed and a mathematical programming model is formulated. The distribution of export containers in yard bays is taken into account, together with bearing capacity and specially-assigned cells in the vessel, to reduce the interference in the same slot during the process of container retrieval from the storage yard. Numerical tests are carried out and their results show the effectiveness and feasibility of the model. The application of the proposed theory provides a practical significance to improve loading efficiency. © 2013 Asian Network for Scientific Information.