A Multi-stage Decomposition Heuristic for the Container Stowage Problem

A significant and growing volume of global trade travels on container ships, and each year larger ships are introduced. For this reason, the Container Stowage Problem, a fundamental problem in marine cargo transportation involving the optimal assignment of shipping containers of various types to specific storage locations in container ship at each port in order to maximize loading and unloading efficiency and minimize shipping costs, is growing in importance. In spite of this, the problem is currently solved in an ad-hoc manner based on experience and rules-of thumb. In this paper, we develop a multi-stage decomposition heuristic for this problem that accounts for the many complexities of real-world versions of the problem. This approach is performing well in testing on real-life problems, and is currently being developed for inclusion in commercial software.