Vol. 4, No.

2 (2009) 41-49
International Journal of Information Systems for Logistics and Management
http://www.knu.edu.tw/academe/englishweb/web/ijislmweb/index.html
A Model for the Stowage Planning of 40 Feet
Containers at Container Terminals
Zhao Ning and Mi Weijian
Logistics Engineering School, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China
Received 19 January 2009; received in revised form 20 March 2009; accepted 15 May 2009
ABSTRACT
In container terminals, one of the most important factors driving the logistic efficiency in the yard
is stowage planning for containers designated to be exported. The stowage plan and operations have to
meet the requirement of the liner shipping company of ship stability on the one hand, and to ensure the
smooth and orderly process of handling containers, deployment and movement of the yard cranes on the
other. These criteria are often in conflict. This paper is concerned with the ship's container stowage
planning problem which is formulated as a multi-objective integer linear programming. For the sake of
being practical, the model not only considers the conflict between ship stability and containers' reshuf-
fling operation but also first takes into account the moving frequency of yard cranes, the probability of
wait by quay crane and the feasibility of multi-YC feeding one QC during the loading process. A wide
variety of numerical experiments demonstrated that solutions by this formulation are useful and ap-
plicable in practice.
Keywords: multi-objective integer linear programming, container terminal, stowage planning, ship
loading.
1. INTRODUCTION
Increased regional competition has put further
pressure on port operators to stay competitive and relevant
to their customers. Lower handling charge, shorter tran-
sit time, higher level of service, and wider connectivity
to the rest of the world have been identified as the main
goals to acquire international competitiveness.
It is therefore not surprising that a number of stud-
ies have been conducted in various aspects for optimiza-
tion of the container terminal operations. As a result, vari-
ous control policies for unloading, storing, and loading
containers have been proposed based on simulation and
mathematical formulations. One of the most prominent
results is the application of object-oriented approach,
in which terminal resources and entities are modeled
as individual objects and solutions to the performance
problem are found via operation research techniques.
However, as far as the throughput of container terminals
is concerned, the service rate to meet the demand by mega
vessels has yet to be achieved in the studies that con-
centrated on conventional storage yard, where containers
are stacked on the ground, side by side and one on top
of another.
The main disadvantage of the conventional stack-
ing scheme is that the reshuffling operations, which incur
additional unproductive moves, have to be performed
in order to retrieve a container from a lower tier. The
vehicle requesting the container will have to wait extra
time which may cause delays in feeding to the quay cranes.
The result could be as serious as lengthening the vessel's
turnaround time and consequently a downgrade of ser-
vice level. Therefore, in order to reduce the chances of
retrieving containers that are not on top of the stacks, and
also due to the weight constraint of containers, the stack-
ing height is usually restricted to not more than eight
42 International Journal of the Information Systems for Logistics and Management (IJISLM), Vol. 4, No. 2 (2009)
(in practice even lower than eight). However, this prac-
tice implies a limited utilization of ground space that is
scarce and previous.
In response to these observations, this work focus
on stowage planning that assigns to each bay position a
particular outbound container with a type matching the
preliminary type-based stowage plan provided by shippers.
It is normally done by assigning outbound containers
in inverse order of ports to be visited by the ships and
changes may be required from the shipping companies.
Stowage plans are prepared a few hours in advance. We
focus only on the 40 feet full containers stowage prob-
lem, since different type of containers should obey differ-
ent rules of stowage, for instance, the empty containers'
stowage rules are totally different from the full. However,
it is applicable because the liner shipping company will
designate the bay positions for each type of containers
in the PSP (Preliminary Stowage Plan). And the model
developed in this study is adaptable for the case with 20
feet containers without major modifications.
This paper is organized as follows. The next sec-
tion reviews the related literature. In the third section
the proposed algorithm is described. In the subsequent
section, a variety of numerical experiments are carried
out and presented, and the final section reports the paper's
findings and conclusions.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Management of container terminal operations is
essentially the allocation and scheduling of the ex-
pensive resources such as berths, quay cranes, storage
space, yard cranes, and container carriers. Each type
of these resources plays an indispensable role in the
interlocking processes in a container terminal. A com-
prehensive review on various decision problems that
arise in the planning of export containers stowage is
given as followed in the literature. Some of the tech-
niques introduced herein will be extended to evaluate
the stowage planning.
Since the 1970s, researchers drawn from academic
and commercial shipping organizations, have tried to
examine and worked over the problem of stowage plan-
ning. As a category of the loading problem, stowage
planning is well recognized in the literature and has
become widely used in a variety of transportation opera-
tions. In the early stage, most of the studies were directed
at the pre stowage planning in liner shipping companies.
Those methods developed have been grouped into the
following five main classes: (1) simulation based upon
probability; (2) heuristic driven; (3) mathematical
modeling; (4) rule-based expert systems; and (5) decision
support systems. None of these approaches have provided
a solution to the complete stowage-planning problem.
Here follows a brief review of relatively recent research
into automating stowage planning.
Shields (1984) developed a container ship stowage
computer-aided preplanning system. Here a small num-
ber of stowage plans are created which are then evaluated
and compared by simulation of the voyage across a
number of legs. The order in which loading heuristics
are applied is determined using a limited number of dif-
ferent solutions. Since then further investigations have
been carried out (Ratcliffe and Sen, 1987; Saginaw and
Parakis, 1989) using expert systems and rule-based tech-
niques to aid the stevedore in finding suitable con-
figurations. Rule-based decision systems for dealing with
MBPP are presented in Ambrosino and Sciomachen
(1998), where a constraints satisfaction approach is used
for defining and characterising the space of feasible
solutions without employing an objective function to
optimise, and in Wilson and Roach (2000), where the
potential of applying the theory of artificial intelligence
to cargo stowage problems is explored. Todd and Sen
(1997) implemented a GA procedure with multiple
criteria such as proximity in terms of container location
on board and the minimization of unloading-related
reshuffle, transverse moment and vertical moment. Their
study examined the relationship between the reshuffle
and the ship stability. Winter (1999) introduced the stow-
age planning in conjunction with load planning taking
into account the equity of quay crane workload. This
study also inspired issues of loading-related reshuffle and
ship stability. However, although stability is an impor-
tant factor of the pre stowage planning for the liners, but
is not a key factor of the stowage in container terminals.
Note that all the above studies do not assume that each
vertical column in holds contains only containers of the
same destination.
Botter and Brinati (1992), and Cho (1984) explored
the application of mathematical models and linear pro-
gramming to the problem, whereas too many simplifica-
tion hypotheses were incorporated , which have made
their approaches unsuitable for practical applications.
Avriel and Penn (1993) and Avriel et al. (1998) addressed
a stowage problem which formulated the problem as a
0-1 Integer Programming and applied it for loading onto
a single hold, but only the unloading-related reshuffles
was taken into consideration.
Some researchers explored the potential of apply-
ing the theory of artificial intelligence to cargo stowage
problems. This class includes the work of Dillingham,
Perakis, Wilson and Roach (1999-2001), and Sato.
Ambrosino et al. (2004) addressed a stowage-
planning problem with the objective of minimizing the
total stowage time where more practical constraints are
taken into account such as different types of containers
in length, weight limit being accepted for securing ship
structure, etc. However, they do not explicitly take into
account loading-related reshuffle.
Kim et al. analyzed rehandles of transfer crane and
made a evaluation of the number of rehandles in container
Z. Ning and M. Weijian: A Model for the Stowage Planning of 40 Feet Containers at Container Terminals 43
yards (Kim, 1994, 1997; Kim and Kim, 1994; Kim et al.,
2000, 2004). In 2004 they addressed a load-planning prob-
lem with an objective of proper arrangement of container
stacks on board in light of smooth quay crane operation
and the other of proper container retrieval sequence from
container stacks in the yard in light of smooth transtainer
operation. For this problem, they developed a beam search
algorithm.
Imai et al. did a series of research on loading busi-
ness in the container terminal (Imai and Miki, 1989; Imai
et al., 2001, 2002, 2006). They formulated a multi-objec-
tive simultaneous stowage planning model for a container
ship with container rehandle in yard stacks. They utilized
the estimated number of rehandles in order to take the
rehandle objective into account in the formulation. In this
study, the rehandle is estimated based on the expected
number of rehandles when retrieving each container in
the block as the first one to be taken.
Sciomachen and Tanfani (2007) applied the theory
of 3D-BPP approach to optimize stowage plans and
terminal productivity. They evaluated how stowage
plans can influence the performance of the quay so as
to produce stowage plans that minimize the total loading
time and allow an efficient use of the quay equipment.
However the performance of the yard crane and other
factors are more important for the stowage planning in
CT. The containership stowage and load-planning prob-
lem is much more difficult to solve than the three-dimen-
sional bin packing problem due to the fact that the ships
stowage plan has to consider the assignment of containers
to a three-dimensional storage space in addition to the
restrictions imposed in retrieving containers from the
stacks in the field.
To sum up the points which we have just indicated,
three sorts of elementary and crucial factors of this
stowage problem were barely considered in most of the
relevant research work. That includes (1) reshuffles in
the stacks; (2) overweight stowage; (3) waiting by quay
cranes; (4) move frequency of yard cranes; and (5)
number of feeding blocks. In this paper we do take into
account all the above factors comprehensively.
3. MODEL FORMULATION
3.1 Stowage Planning Description
As is well known, container terminals play a funda-
mental role in intercontinental cargo transportation by
serving as an intermodal interface between the sea and
the land carriers. Typically, they receive cargos in con-
tainers from various transportation devices like vessels
or trucks, store them temporarily to account for the dif-
ferences in arrival times of the sea and the land transport,
and transfer them to other transportation devices to
be delivered to their destinations. Fig. 1 is a schematic
diagram showing the core operations in a container
terminal. There is a typical cross-sectional view of a
cellular ship. Each cell in the figure represents a slot
where a container can be placed and the number in the
cell implies the weight of the stowed container.
The stowage planning is to assign a slot to each
outbound container stacking in the yard according to
the preliminary stowage plan provided by the liner ship-
ping company. The PSP (preliminary stowage plan) is a
kind of sketchy plan of slots for each type of containers
classified by size, EF (empty or full), discharging port,
dangerousness, particularity and so on.
As has been elucidated in the foregoing, the stow-
age problem can be attributed to the decision-making
of the relationship between the items of two sets. Set A is
the containers in the yard, whereas set B should be
the available slots from the PSP. The stowage between
containers and slots in a ship is shown in Fig. 2.
As shown in the following figure, in conventional
storage yard, containers are stacked by yard cranes side
by side and one on top of another to form rectangularly
shaped heaps called blocks, each of which consists of a
number of rows in width, a number of bays in length and
a number of tiers in height. Similarly, in each ship bay,
there are also a number of rows in width and a number
of tiers in height.
3.2 Evaluation of Unavoidable Reshuffling
Containers
Although the loading sequence of containers in a
YC
6 5 4 3 2 1
Truck
10 08 06 04 02 01 03 05 07 09
27
26
29
25
25
28
26
26
29
28
22
22
21
27
25
16
22
29
29
28
24
23
25
24
24
26
25
16
27
22
26
30
30
30
30
30
23
26
30
30
30
Fig. 1. An overview of container terminal port operations
06 04 02 00 01 03 05 06 04 02 00 01 03 05
06
04
02
06
04
02
34
22
22
73
22
22
20
22
22
20
22
22
22
22
22
57
10
10
76
10
14
76
10
15
10
11
82
10
10
26
76
10
14 22
Slots
in
Ship-
bays
Yard-
bays
Block
A3 02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64
01 03 05 07 19 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65
1
2
3
4
5
6
Fig. 2. The stowage between containers and slots
44 International Journal of the Information Systems for Logistics and Management (IJISLM), Vol. 4, No. 2 (2009)
ship-bay is totally unknown before the stowage planning,
but in the same row of a ship-bay the slots will be stowed
in a certain order. The example illustrated in Fig. 3
showed the situation of unavoidable reshuffle. If con-
tainer A is stowed in slot A and container B is stowed
in slot B, then container A will definitely result in a re-
shuffle of container B because slot A should be loaded
in advance of slot B.
To further calculate the reshuffles caused by a stow-
age planning, the following notations should be declared
first.
Note: the notations with upper characters are unknown
variables to be decided; the notations containing any lower
characters are known parameters.
i, x = Index of containers to be loaded;
n = Number of containers;
j, y = Index of slots in the ship;
m = Number of slots;
q = Index of blocks in the yard;
tq = Number of blocks;
w = Index of yard-bays of the blocks;
tw = Number of yard-bays;
b = Index of ship-bays of the ship;
tb = Number of ship-bays;
l = Index of rows in the ship-bays;
tl = Number of rows in a ship-bay;
STOWAGE
ij
= Binary variable indicating whether the
container i should be stowed in slot j;
Cud
ix
= Known binary parameter indicating
whether container x is stacked above
container i in the same row as container
i;
Sud
jy
= Known binary parameter indicating
whether slot y is right above slot j in the
same row as slot j;
RESTOW
ij
= Binary variable indicating whether the
container i stowed in slot j causes a
reshuffle of other containers;
To calculate the total number of reshuffles, the vari-
able Uppos_stowage
ij
should be introduced to indicate the
number of containers above container i which are stowed
above slot j. We can define this value by
Uppos_stowage
ij
=
Cud
ix

y = 1
m

x = 1
n
* STOWAGE
ij
* Sud
jy
(1)
Based on the analysis above, the unavoidable
reshuffle occurs when Uppos_stowage
ij
>= 1 and
STOWAGE
ij
= 1. So the reshuffle can be formulated as
Uppos_stowage
ij
*
STOWAGE
ij
. Since the multiplication
of two variables will make the model non-linear, we have
to use a trick to make the evaluation of total reshuffles
linear.
In order to make this formulation solvable as a math-
ematical programming, we introduce the binary variable
RESTOW
ij
. By using this definition we may formulate
the problem only with the minimization of the Total
Reshuffles as follows:
[RS]
Minimize RESTOW
ij

j = 1
m

i = 1
n
(2)
subject to,
STOWAGE
ij

i = 1
n
< = 1j (3)
STOWAGE
ij

j = 1
m
< = 1i (4)
RESTOW
ij
>= Uppos_stowage
ij
/ 10
+ STOWAGE
ij
1i, j (5)
STOWAGE
ij
= {0, 1}i, j (6)
RESTOW
ij
= {0, 1}i, j (7)
where STOWAGE
ij
= 1 if a container at position i of yard
stacks is loaded in slot j of ship; = 0, otherwise and n
is the number of containers to be loaded.
In the formulation, constraints (3) and (4) ensure
that every container is stowed with one slot and every slot
can only be taken by one container, whereas constraints
(5) ensures Uppos_stowage
ij
>= 1 and STOWAGE
ij
= 1
when RESTOW
ij
= 1.
3.3 Stability Factor: Overweight Stowage
The stowage planning has to satisfy the stability re-
quirement of liner shipping company. Hence, it must be
approved by the first mate of the ship before the loading
process. And the primary concern for the mate is the is-
sue of heavy container stowed on top of a lighter one.
Although overweight stowage is not strictly forbidden,
it should be as fewer as possible. Therefore, we ought
to formulate it as a stability objective instead of a
04 02 00 01 03 1
4
3
2
1
2 3 4 5 6
Fig. 3. Unavoidable reshuffle
Z. Ning and M. Weijian: A Model for the Stowage Planning of 40 Feet Containers at Container Terminals 45
constraint, and this objective should focus on the total
number of containers that is stowed on a lighter one in-
stead of the GM itself.
The following parameters are declared in order
to formulate the overweight stowage objective.
Va
jy
= Known binary parameter indicating
whether slot y is on top of slot j.
Ctn_weight
i
= Known parameter, the weight of
container i;
SLOT_WEIGHT
j
= Variable, the weight of container that
is stowed in slot j;
WAV
j
= Variable, the weight of container that
is stowed on top of slot j;
UVMB
j
= Variable, the weight that remains
after the weight of container stowed
on top of slot j is subtracted from
SLOT_WEIGHT
j
;
OVERWEIGHT
j
= Vari abl e, i f UVMB
j
> 0 t hen
OVERWEIGHT
j
= 1, otherwise, 0;
OVERWEIGHT_STOWAGE = Variable, the total number
of containers that is overweight
stowed.
Based on constraint (3), SLOT_WEIGHT
j
can be
evaluated by Ctn_weight
i
and STOWAGE
ij
.
SLOT_WEIGHT
j
=
STOWAGE
ij

i = 1
n
* Ctn_weight
i
(8)
WAV
j
=
Va
jy

y = 1
m

i = 1
n
* STOWAGE
iy
* Ctn_weight
i
(9)
UVMB
j
= WAV
j
SLOT_WEIGHT
j
(10)
OVERWEIGHT_STOWAGE is the count of UVMB
j
which is positive. Therefore, a constraint and the variable
OVERWEIGHT
j
and are introduced as follows to formu-
late it mathematically, resulting in the formulation [OS].
minimize OVERWEIGHT
J

j = 1
m
(11)
subject to (3)~(4), (6)~(7) and
OVERWEIGHT
j
>= UVMBj / 100 (12)
OVERWEIGHT
j
= {0, 1}j (13)
where number 100 ensures that UVMB
j
/100<1.
3.4 Minimize the Probability of Wait
The wait by quay crane will directly lead to ineffi-
ciency of the loading process. Fig. 4 shows two different
stowage plans within a ship-bay stowed with containers
from two blocks. For Stowage I, in each row of the ship-
bay, containers stowed are from different blocks. In
case of this situation, the two yard cranes of Block A and
Block B would have a good chance of interacting each
other's work efficiency and finally result in the wait of
QC. But for Stowage II, there would be less probability
of interaction and conflict.
In this regard, we may formulate the problem only
with the minimization of the total number of blocks in
each row of the ship-bay as follows:
SLOT_Q
jq
= Variable indicating whether the container
stowed in slot j is from block q;
Rrs
jl
= Known parameter indicating whether slot
j is in row l;
Rbays
jb
= Known parameter indicating whether slot
j is in ship-bay b;
Rqc
iq
= Known parameter indicating whether con-
tainer i is in block q;
Rwc
iw
= Known parameter indicating whether con-
tainer i is in the yard-bay w;
L_Q
lq
= Variable, the number of containers from
block q stowed in ship-row l;
L_Q_01
lq
= Binary variable, whether there are any con-
tainers from block q stowed in ship-row l;
SLOT_Q
jq
= STOWAGE
ij

i = 1
n
* Rqc
iq
(14)
L_Q
lq
= SLOT_Q
jq

j = 1
m
* Rrs
jl
(15)
[PW]
Minimize L_Q_01
lq

q = 1
tq

l = 1
tl
(16)
subject to (3)~(4), (6)~(7) and
L_Q_01
lq
> = (1 / 1

n = 1
m

i = 1
n
) * L_Q
lq
(17)
L_Q_01
lq
= {0, 1}l, q (18)
Stowage I Stowage II
BLOCK A
BLOCK B
BLOCK A
BLOCK B
B
A
A
B
A
A
B
A
A
A A
B
A
B
A
A
A
B
B
A
A
B
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
Fig. 4. A ship-bay stowed with containers from two blocks
46 International Journal of the Information Systems for Logistics and Management (IJISLM), Vol. 4, No. 2 (2009)
where L_Q_01
lq
= 1 if one or more containers from block
q are stowed in ship-row l; = 0 , otherwise, which is en-
sured by constraints (17)~(18).
3.5 Minimize the Move Frequency of YC
The move of yard crane from one yard-bay to
another can decrease efficiency with a cost of fuel. As
is shown in Fig. 5, two different stowage plans within a
ship-bay stowed with containers from two yard-bays
of one block. In most cases, there is one yard crane
working in one block.
For Stowage I, in most rows of the ship-bay con-
tainers stowed are from different bays. As is illustrated
in Fig. 5, the loading process is divided into five phases
according to the four moves of the yard crane from bay
to bay like NMNMN, whereas for Stowage II,
the yard crane only has to move once from bay N to bay
M.
Therefore, the problem can be formulated with the
minimization of the total number of yard-bays in each
row of the ship-bay as follows:
L_W
lw
= Variable, the number of containers from
yard-bay w stowed in ship-row l;
L_W_01
lw
= Binary variable, whether there are any
containers from yard-bay w stowed in ship-
row l;
L_W
lw
> = STOWAGE
Iij

n = 1
m

i = 1
n
* Rwc
iw
* Rrs
jl
(19)
[MF]
Minimize L_W_01
lw

w = 1
tw

l = 1
tl
(20)
subject to (3)~(4), (6)~(7) and
L_W_01
lw
> = (1 / 1

j = 1
m

i = 1
n
* L_W
lw
(21)
L_W_01
lw
= {0, 1}l, w (22)
where L_W_01
lw
= 1 if one or more containers from
yard-bay w are stowed in ship-row l; = 0, otherwise, which
is ensured by constraints (21)~(22).
3.6 Maximize the Number of Feeding Blocks
The work rate of QC is generally faster than that
of YC, especially during the loading process. One of
the most important factors influencing the loading effi-
ciency is the feeding process in yard. Therefore the feed-
ing yard cranes for one ship-bay should be more than
one if possible, and this possibility depends on the stow-
age planning.
Fig. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a stowage
plan with containers from block X and block Y. It is evi-
dent that to maximize the number of feeding blocks is
to maximize the number of blocks in each ship-bay.
Accordingly, we may formulate the problem with
the maximization of the total number of blocks in each
ship-bay as follows:
BAY_Q
bq
= Variable, the number of containers from
the block q stowed in ship-bay b;
BAY_Q_01
bq
= Binary variable, whether there are any
containers from the block q stowed in
ship-bay b;
BAY_Q
bq
= SLOT_Q
jq

j = 1
m
* Rbays
jb
(23)
[FB]
Maximize BAY_Q_01
bq

q = 1
tq

b = 1
tb
(24)
subject to (3)~(4), (6)~(7) and
BAY_Q_01
bq
<= BAY_Q
bq
(25)
M M M M
M
M
M M M M
M
M
M M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M
M N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N N N N N
N
N N
N
Stowage II Stowage I
13 15 17 19 21 23 13 15 17 19 21 23
6
5
4
3
2
1
6
5
4
3
2
1
BAY M BAY N BAY M BAY N
Fig. 5. A ship-bay stowed with containers from two yard-bays
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
QC
BLOCK X BLOCK Y
6 5 4 3 2 1 1 2 3 4 5 6
Fig. 6. Two YCs feeding one QC during the loading process
Z. Ning and M. Weijian: A Model for the Stowage Planning of 40 Feet Containers at Container Terminals 47
BAY_Q_01
bq
= {0, 1}b, q (26)
where BAY_Q_01
bq
= 1 if one or more containers from
block q are stowed in ship-bay b; = 0, otherwise, which
is ensured by constraints (25)~(26).
3.7 Formulation
Besides the five objectives above, the port opera-
tors have to do the stowage planning under the following
three constraints.
There is a weight limitation for each row of the ship-
bay. So that the sum of stowed containers weight for
each row must be less than or equal to the limitation.
For the containers stowed on deck of the ship, over-
weight stowage is strictly forbidden, which means each
container on deck must be on the top of a heavier one
or the first tier of the ship-bay.
The general height of container is 8.4 feet, while the
high containers height is 9.6 feet. So there is a limita-
tion for the number of high containers in each row
of ship-bay.
These three constraints can be formulated as
follows:
L_weight_limitation
l
= Known parameter representing the
weight limitation for each row of the ship-
bay;
If_ondeck
j
= Known parameter indicating whether slot
j is on deck or not;
If_high
i
= Known parameter indicating whether
container i is a high container or not;
High_container_limit = Known parameter representing
the limitation of the number high con-
tainers stowed in a row;
STOWAGE
ij

j = 1
m

i = 1
n
* Ctn_weight
i
* Rrs
jl
(27)
<= L_weight_limitation
l
OVERWEIGHT
j

j = 1
m
* If_ondeck
j
= 0 (28)
STOWAGE
ij

j = 1
m

i = 1
n
* If_high
i
* Rrs
jl
<= High_container_limit (29)
Among a number of techniques for generating a
non-inferior solution set, we employ the weighting method.
In this method we define the problem as a mathematical
programming model with a single objective that incorpo-
rates multiple objectives.
Putting the five objectives into a single objective
with weights, we obtain the following formulation:
[PA]
Minimize Z = RESTOW
ij

j = 1
m

i = 1
n
+ OVERWEIGHT
j

j = 1
m
+ L_Q_01
lq

q = 1
tq

l = 1
tl
+ L_W_01
lw

w = 1
tw

l = 1
tl
BAY_Q_01
bq

q = 1
tq

b = 1
tb
(30)
subject to (3)~(7), (12)~(13), (17)~(18), (21)~(22) and
(25)~(29), where , , , and are weights for the
objectives of [RS], [OS], [PW], [MF] and [FB], respec-
tively. Note that is set negative because of the maximi-
zation of [FB].
3.8 Solution Procedure Using the Genetic Algorithm
We develop a heuristic algorithm by using the ge-
netic algorithm (GA) in Aimms language. The sets we
defined in the model include yard positions, yard blocks,
yard bays, positions in the ship, stacks in the ship and
bays of the ship. The relationships described between
the sets are also given as constant parameters or decision
variables. The stowage-planning problem is designed as
a minimization mathematical program with all the above
constraints and the multi-objective formulated in (30).
GAs are widely applied for plenty of practical prob-
lems of mathematical programming, which are difficult
to solve in terms of polynomially-bounded computational
time. It is solved for each scenario to find the optimal
solution under each scenario, and then the robust model is
solved to find the robust solution. Although we can solve
the model with solver XA, but the calculation is too
much slow when the number of containers in the same
group is increasing or when the initial feasible solution
lags far behind the optimal one. Thus, to accelerate the
calculation, we introduced selection operator and muta-
tion operators into the solving process. To minimize the
objective function, the selection operator and mutation
operators are designed as followed.
Selection operator:
fitness (x) =
1
10
[y (x) / y (x)

x = 1
n
] (31)
Y(x) denotes the objective function value. Fitness(x)
stands for the probability of Gene X being selected.
The mutation operators are designed with a cer-
tain purpose. For example, to minimize the possibility
of restow, the Gene X (Stowage
ij
) mutates when
Max(Uppos_stowage
ij
* Stowage
ij
) >= 1, and the muta-
tion operator is to change the value of Stowage
ij
, Stowage
xj
,
Stowage
xy
and Stowage
iy
into their opposite way (01,
10).
48 International Journal of the Information Systems for Logistics and Management (IJISLM), Vol. 4, No. 2 (2009)
4. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
The solution procedures were coded in Aimms
language on the PC with Core(TM) 2, T5600 (1.83GHz)
CPU. Problems used in the experiments were read from
the database of container terminal management informa-
tion system for Tianjin port. Values of weights , , ,
and in Equation (30) used in the numerical experi-
ments are respectively 1, 1, 2, 2, 1.
Table 1 demonstrates the numerical cases of differ-
ent ship size, number of containers to be stowed, the
result of reshuffles, overweight stowage and the solving
time.
The stowage plan demonstrates a balanced stow-
age in terms of weight distribution, as the solution for
case 1 is shown in Fig. 7 where the numbers on each slot
represent containers weight. There are two bays of
containers. As is shown in Fig. 7, the left bay is stowed
in a hold, whereas the right one is stowed on deck.
And in Fig. 8, it shows the stowage plan of twenty
40 full containers that will be discharged in Singapore.
The stowed ship-bay is 14d with containers from yard-
bay A110 of block A1 and yard-bay A348 of block
A3
As is illustrated in Fig.8, in each row of the ship-
bay, the stowed containers are from one block which per-
fectly accord with the objective of [PW] to minimize. The
fourteen containers stowed on ship-bay 14d are from
only one yard-bay of A348, although there are other
bays in block A3, which proves the model can well mini-
mize the move frequency of YC (objective of [MF]). And
according to the above figure 8, we can imagine the
deployment of yard cranes during the loading process
of ship-bay 14d. Evidently, the containers can be
loaded by two feeding flows, which well meet the re-
quirement of objective [FB].
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
This paper addressed the problem of obtaining a
non-inferior solution set for the container ship stowage
planning in the container terminals. The problem was
defined as a multi-objective integer programming, for
Table 1. Solution profile for cases of different
container volume
Case Ship Container Reshuffle Over Time
size volume weight (s)
1 S 50 0 3 142
2 S 125 2 4 152
3 S 150 3 7 176
4 S 175 2 5 235
5 S 200 3 5 248
6 S 200 4 9 268
7 S 200 4 2 335
8 S 250 4 11 503
9 L 300 2 7 654
10 L 325 7 9 752
11 L 345 3 9 809
12 L 350 2 10 856
13 L 365 2 1 918
14 L 375 2 13 1,006
15 L 400 3 12 1,073
16 L 400 0 14 1,207
17 L 450 1 7 1,357
18 L 450 5 7 1,511
19 L 501 5 9 1,857
20 L 553 7 15 2,050
Note that each case of experiment consists of several types of containers
classified by their discharging ports. For each type, it is solved separately.
So the computation time in the last column of Table 1 is the sum of each
types solved time.
04 06 00 02 01 05 03 04 06 02 01 05 03
28
28
25
06
07
09
09
21
07
09
07
25
09
09
26
09
09
26
09
21
29
05
22
06
22
07
27
16
27
20
28
21
30
In a hold On deck
Fig. 7. The stowage of bay 18h and 22d in case 1
06 04 03 00 01 03 05
25
26
27
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
2
3
4
5
6
22
25
20
15
22
22
17
22
24
18
19
24
24
24
24
15
24
Block A3
Block A1
Fig. 8. The stowage from two yard-bays to one ship-bay in case 8
Z. Ning and M. Weijian: A Model for the Stowage Planning of 40 Feet Containers at Container Terminals 49
which we obtained a set of non-inferior solutions by us-
ing the weighting method. For the sake of being prac-
tical, the model not only considers the conflict between
ship stability and containers' reshuffling operation but
also first takes into account the moving frequency of yard
cranes, the probability of wait by quay crane and the
feasibility of multi-YC feeding one QC during the load-
ing process. A wide variety of experiments demonstrated
that the solutions by this formulation were acceptable
for practical use.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank the terminal management
office of the terminal SMCT for the fruitful support.
Special thanks are to the anonymous referee for the valu-
able remarks and helpful comments and suggestions.
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