Flexible ship loading problem with transfer vehicle assignment and scheduling. (May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Iris, Çağatay; Christensen, Jonas; Pacino, Dario; Ropke, Stefan
• Is Part Of: Transportation research. Volume 111(2018)
• Page Start: 113
• Page End: 134
• Publication Date: 2018-05
• Subjects: Ship loading -- Container terminals -- Stowage planning -- Transport operations in yard -- Mega vessels -- Shipping lines and port collaboration; Transportation -- Research -- Periodicals; Transportation -- Mathematical models -- Periodicals
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2018.03.009
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0191-2615

Abstract

Highlights: The integrated management of ship loading operations, including operational stowage planning, load sequencing, planning of the equipment to use and their scheduling, is addressed. The cooperative agreement between the shipping liner and the port operator is used to establish the flexible ship loading problem. A mathematical model, various modeling enhancements and a method to obtain strong lower bounds are presented. A heuristic method to solve the large scale instances is suggested. Significant cost savings are obtained compared to the hierarchical solution. Abstract: This paper presents the flexible containership loading problem for seaport container terminals. The integrated management of loading operations, planning of the transport vehicles to use and their scheduling is what we define as the Flexible Ship Loading Problem (FSLP). The flexibility comes from a cooperative agreement between the terminal operator and the liner shipping company, specifying that the terminal has the right to decide which specific container to load for each slot obeying the class-based stowage plan received from the liner. We formulate a mathematical model for the problem. Then we present various modelling enhancements and a mathematical model to obtain strong lower bounds. We also propose a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem. It is shown that enhancements improve the performance of formulation significantly, and the heuristic efficiently generates high-quality solutions. Results also point out that substantial cost savings can be achieved by integrating the ship loading operations.