Modelling and Tabu search heuristic for solving container stowage planning problem

The container stowage planning problem (CSPP) presented in this paper considers the task of loading containers into the containership with a set of structural and operational restrictions. We formulate this problem as an integer programming model to minimize the number of shift, the total loading time and the weight difference between maximum loaded bay and minimum loaded bay. For solving this problem, we decompose this problem into former subproblem and latter subproblem and solving two subproblems orderly to obtain the initial solutions. Based on this initial solution, the tabu search algorithm with diverse neighborhoods and diversification strategy are proposed. The experimental results comparing with CPLEX show that the proposed mathematical model and the tabu search algorithm can obtain better solutions than CPLEX in an allowable time and resolve the problem more effectively than current plan operator.