Authors: Daniela Ambrosino Massimo Paolucci Anna Sciomachen
Publish Date: 2015/09/25
Volume: 21, Issue: 7, Pages: 1753-1763
Abstract
In this paper we consider the problem of determining stowage plans for containers into ships having to visit a given number of ports in their circular route The problem is denoted MultiPort Master Bay Plan Problem MPMBPP In practice the MPMBPP consists in determining how to stow a given set of containers split into different groups according to their size type class of weight and destination into bay locations either on the deck or in the stow Some structural and operational constraints related to the containers the ship and the maritime terminals have to be satisfied The single port MBPP is a NPhard optimization problem and has been proposed in the literature from 2001 From then some variants of the problem have been presented together with the related solution methods mainly aimed at including in the corresponding models realistic features required as a consequence of the naval gigantism As a novel issue in the present work we look for stowage plans where the set of containers to be loaded on board at each port of the route consists of standard reefer and open top ones Hatches positions in the ships are considered too We present a new mixed integer programming MIP model for the MPMBPP able to manage realistic scenarios and find stowage plans for containerships up to 18000 TEUs The model is finalized to be solved with a commercial MIP solver The reported computational experimentation shows that the model is very efficient and could be fruitfully used for facing realsize instances of the problem
Keywords: