A beam search algorithm for minimizing crane times in premarshalling problems
The premarshalling problem consists of sorting the containers placed in a bay of the container yard so that they can be retrieved in the order in which they will be required. We study the premarshalling problem with crane time minimization objective and develop a beam search algorithm, with some new elements adapted to the characteristics of the problem, to solve it. We propose various evaluation criteria, depending on the type of container movement, for its local evaluation; a new heuristic algorithm including local search for blue its global evaluation; and several new dominance rules. The computational study shows the contribution of each new element. The performance of the complete algo…
Integer programming models for the pre-marshalling problem
[EN] The performance of shipping companies greatly depends on reduced berthing times. The trend towards bigger ships and shorter berthing times places severe stress on container terminals, which cannot simply increase the available cranes indefinitely. Therefore, the focus is on optimizing existing resources. An effective way of speeding up the loading/unloading operations of ships at the container terminal is to use the idle time before the arrival of a ship for sorting the stored containers in advance. The pre-marshalling problem consists in rearranging the containers placed in a bay in the order in which they will be required later, looking for a sequence with the minimum number of moves…