On the decision-making problem of stockpiling position of containers in storage yard based on GA

This paper addresses the decision-making problem of the stockpiling position allocation of arriving export containers in a yard-bay. Firstly a dynamic programming model to determine the optimal storage slots in a yard-bay for the arriving containers is proposed. In order to improve the satisfaction of the shipping and avoid too much rehandling, the pre-rehandling principles that the earlier loading/heavier container should be stored on the top of the later loading/lighter container in the same stack and the time factor is prior to the weight one is presented. The model makes minimizing the number of rehandling as the objective to lay the arriving containers into the proper slots in the yard-bay by the gantry cranes. In view that the time complexity is exponentially increasing with dynamic programming method, the genetic algorithm is employed to resolve the problem and the results of computing simulated data cases with the proper size show that the genetic algorithm can find the optimal solution to the problem with much less time than the dynamic programming method.