Article
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Real-Time Batch Optimization for the Stochastic Container Relocation Problem
Version 1
: Received: 8 January 2024 / Approved: 8 January 2024 / Online: 8 January 2024 (10:29:19 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Zhou, S.; Zhang, Q. Real-Time Batch Optimization for the Stochastic Container Relocation Problem. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 2624. Zhou, S.; Zhang, Q. Real-Time Batch Optimization for the Stochastic Container Relocation Problem. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 2624.
Abstract
The container relocation problem (CRP) is one of the important topics in container terminals, which aims to find the optimal sequence of movements to minimize the total number of relocations needed to retrieve all the containers within a bay according to a given specific layout and retrieval order. However, determining such an order may be difficult due to uncertainty. Various CRP solution methods proposed so far show a common pitfall concerning the complexity of the solving process, whose scale grows exponentially with the number of containers. Considering the retrieval operation process of the inbound containers in a bay consists of several operation rounds, this paper focuses on the real-time operation scenario of each round to minimize the actual number of relocations during the pick-up process, i.e., starting from the initial layout of the bay, we minimize the sum of the incremental number of blocking containers due to the layout change and the number of reallocated containers unrelated to the target container. We present a heuristic algorithm (called SPFH) based on the three rules (LL, MSS, and FSS), considering the adjustment of the pick-up order of containers. Numerical experiments on a set of instances generated from the literature are performed. The proposed methodology excels in both execution efficiency and solution quality and is capable of solving instances that were impossible to solve before. This also makes our methods appealing for being applied in practice. The source codes are available at https://github.com/zhou-sf/rt-scrp.
Keywords
Container Relocation Problem; Stochastic Container Relocation Problem; Real-Time Batch Optimization; Heuristics
Subject
Engineering, Transportation Science and Technology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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