Abstract
The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient heuristic for solving the stowage problem. Containers on board a container ship are stacked one on top of the other in columns, and can only be unloaded from the top of the column. A key objective of stowage planning is to minimize the number of container movements. A genetic algorithm technique is used for solving the problem. A compact and efficient encoding of solutions is developed, which reduces significantly the search space. The efficiency of the suggested encoding is demonstrated through an extensive set of simulation runs and its flexibility is demonstrated by successful incorporation of ship stability constraints.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aslidis, A. (1990). “Minimizing of Overstowage in Container Ship Operations.” Operational Research 90, 457–471.
Austin, S. (1990). “An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms.” AI Expert 5, 49–53.
Avriel, M. and M. Penn. (1993). “Exact and Approximate Solutions of the Container Ship Stowage Problem.” Computers and Industrial Engineering 25, 271–274.
Avriel, M., M. Penn, and N. Shpirer. (2000). “Container Ship Stowage Problem: Complexity and Connection to the Coloring of Circle Graphs.” Discrete Applied Mathematics 103, 271–279.
Avriel, M., M. Penn, N. Shpirer, and S. Witteboon. (1998). “Stowage Planning for Container Ships to Reduce the Number of Shifts.” Annals of Operations Research 76, 55–71.
Bäck, T. (1996). “Evolutionary Algorithms in Theory and Practice.” Evolution Strategies. Evolutionary Programming. Genetic Algorithms. London: Oxford University Press.
Blasum, U., M. Bussieck, W. Hochstattler, C. Moll, H.H. Scheel, and T. Winter. (1996). “Scheduling Trams in the Morning is Hard.” Working Paper, Department of Mathematical Optimization, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
Botter, R.C. and M.A. Brinati. (1992). “Stowage Container Planning: A Model for Getting an Optimal Solution.” IFIP Transactions B (Applications in Techn.) 5, 217–229.
Cheng-Yan Kao and Feng-Tse Lin. (1992). “A Stochastic Approach for the One-Dimensional Bin-Packing Problems.” In Proc. of the 1992 IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol. 2, pp. 1545–1551.
Dunbleton, J.J. (1980). “Expert System Applications to Ocean Shipping—A Status Report.” Marine Technology 27, 265–284.
Flor, M. (1998). “Heuristic Algorithms for Solving the Container Ship Stowage Problem.” M.Sc. Thesis, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa, Israel (in Hebrew).
Goldberg, D. (1989). Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Machine Learning. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Horn, G.P. (2000). “A Branch and Bound Algorithm for the Container Ship Stowage Problem.” M.Sc. Thesis, Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa, Israel (in Hebrew).
Johnson, D.S. and L.A. McGeoch. (1997). “The Traveling Salesman Problem: A Case Study.” In E. Aarts and J.K. Lenstra (eds.), Local Search in Combinatorial Optimization.
Khuri, S., M. Schutz, and J. Heitkotter. (1995). “Evolutionary Heuristics for the Bin-Packing Problem.” In Proc. of the ICANNGA'95, Ales, France, pp. 285–288.
Reeves, C.R. (1994). “A Genetic Approach to Bin-Packing.” In Proc. of the Second Finnish Workshop on Genetic Algorithms and their Applications, Vaasa, Finland, pp. 35–49.
Saginaw II, D.J. and A.N. Perakis. (1989). “A Decision Support System for Container Ship Stowage Planning.” Marine Technology 26, 47–61.
Sha, O.P. (1985). “Computer Aided on Board Container Management.” Computer Applications in the Automation of Shipyard Operation and Ship Design V, 177–187.
Shields, J.J. (1984). “Container Ship Stowage: A Computer-Aided Preplanning System.” Marine Technology 21, 370–383.
Todd, D.S. and P. Sen. (1997). “AMultiple Criteria Genetic Algorithm for Container Ship Loading.” In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Genetic Algorithms.
Wainwright, R. and J. Blanton. (1993). “Multiple Vehicle Routing with Time and Capacity Constraints Using Genetic Algorithm.” In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, pp. 452–459.
Whitley, D. (1989). “The GENITOR Algorithm and Selective Pressure: Why Rank-Based Allocation of Reproductive Trials is Best.” In D. Schaffer (ed.), Proc. of the 3th International Conference on Genetic Algorithms. Morgan Kauffmann, pp. 116–121.
Winter, T. and U. Zimmerman. (1997). “Minimizing Shunting Costs in StorageYards.” Internal Report, Department of Mathematical Optimization, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dubrovsky, O., Levitin, G. & Penn, M. A Genetic Algorithm with a Compact Solution Encoding for the Container Ship Stowage Problem. Journal of Heuristics 8, 585–599 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020373709350
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020373709350