A scatter search optimization for ship consolidation plan for strip coils to reduce the number of shuffling

We consider a consolidation planning problem to a ship in the maritime transportation system, which is a pivotal link to shipping transportation. consolidation planning problem is to select strip coils with different characteristics (ship capacity, destination and due date) and make an outgoing sequence of these coils, which takes the shuffling number into account. In this paper a mixed integer programming model is established considering consolidation planning process of ship consolidation planning problem. And the, an improved scatter search algorithm is proposed to improve the quality of the initial solution which comes from a heuristic algorithm based on stowage operational Know-how. To see the performance of the suggested algorithm, computational tests are performed on problem instances collected in an advanced steel company. The steel production ship transport stowage logistics optimization decision support system, which is based on the study of consolidation planning model and the improved algorithm, is put into trial operation in an advanced steel company.