A Heuristic Approach for the Containership Stowage Problem in Multiple Port-of-call Route

The efficiency of a container transport system primarily depends on the ship scheduling, which is regarded as a complex dynamic application. Therefore, this paper is concerned to ship stowage problem while satisfying the ship safety in her voyage at a number of ports-of-call, which obviously determines the economic performance of the liner shipping companies. When the ship goes to multiple ports-of-call, the stowage problem has been considered at each port in her routine. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming and a heuristic is developed to solve it.