Parallel Processing for Stowage Planning (I)

Abstract

Maritime container transportation is growing significantly worldwide and container vessels are also increasing in size because of the economic scales. Ports are forced to deal with both larger container vessels and more container boxes. With respect to this evolution, container terminals are assigned an increasingly important role as key hubs within the overall transportation network. It is crucial for the container terminals to increase the efficiency of stacking and transport of the large number of containers boxes to and from the ship in order to reduce the ship turn-around time.

Changes in spreader design have had a dramatic impact on efficiency of container handling. In this project, we are going to investigate the effects of changing Spreader design from Single-Lift to Multi-Lift Spreader by applying single-cycle and double-cycle strategy.

Moreover, a model and corresponding algorithms will be proposed in order to demonstrate the efficiency gains associated with double cycling and Multi-Lift spreader. Furthermore, an implementation with java language for total ship turn-around time will be illustrated in a Crane Schedule Displayer. Apart from that, the different TEU handled in percentage and various combinations of containers handled in percentage for unloading and loading will be presented.

Lastly, results on the test cases (real-life data) of Agate Ship and H11 Ship will be evaluated and an improvement on ship turn-around time for Multi-Lift will be discussed.