Title: Collaborative stowage planning problem for a liner ship

Authors: Wen Yi; Wencheng Wang; Yi Hu; Miao Li; Lu Zhen

Addresses: School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, College of Sciences, Massey University, New Zealand ' School of Management, Shanghai University, Shang Da Road 99, Shanghai 200444, China ' School of Management, Shanghai University, Shang Da Road 99, Shanghai 200444, China ' School of Management, Shanghai University, Shang Da Road 99, Shanghai 200444, China ' School of Management, Shanghai University, Shang Da Road 99, Shanghai 200444, China

Abstract: This paper investigates a stowage planning problem, in which a liner ship will visit a sequence of ports, the number of available quay cranes in ports and the numbers of loading/unloading containers in ports are uncertain. This stowage planning problem is about how to assign the loaded containers to the bays of the ship considering uncertain information in the future, so as to minimise the sum of the expected quay crane handling time at the ports. Based on stochastic programming, a two-stage decision model is proposed for this problem. A particle swarm optimisation based solution method is developed to solve the model for large-scale problem instances. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model and the efficiency of the proposed solution method.

Keywords: port operations; stowage planning; container liner ship; maritime logistics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2019.099272

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2019 Vol.11 No.2/3, pp.176 - 195

Received: 15 Jul 2017
Accepted: 09 Nov 2017
Published online: 24 Apr 2019 *

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