A heuristic procedure for the outbound container relocation problem during export loading operations

Roberto Guerra-Olivares, Rosa G. González-Ramírez, Neale R. Smith*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

During export ship loading operations, it is often necessary to perform relocation movements with containers that interfere with access to the desired container in the ship loading sequence. This paper presents a real-time heuristic procedure for the container relocation problem employing reachstacker vehicles as container handling equipment. The proposed heuristic searches for good relocation coordinates within a set of nearby bays. The heuristic has a parameter that determines how far from the original bay a container may be relocated. The tradeoff between reducing relocation movements and limiting vehicle travel distances is examined and the performance of the heuristic is compared with a common practice in the smaller container terminals in Chile and Mexico. Finally, a mathematical model for the container relocation problem is presented.

Original languageEnglish
Article number201749
JournalMathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume2015
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Roberto Guerra-Olivares et al.

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