Conservative Allocation Model for Outbound Containers with Estimated Adjusted Weight Proportion

Abstract

This paper considers location assignment for arriving outbound containers. For the problem, researchers either obtained efficient computation but limited stacking quality or resorted to more specific configuration for better stacking quality but increased computation time significantly. To make a better balance between the representation and the quality, we propose a new way to represent the stack. The new representation way uses some valuable information that the tier number on which the heaviest container is located, which is neglected by previous models. We also treat the punishment coefficient “conservatively” by giving heavier punishments to stacks which are more likely to cause relocation. In addition, the estimated proportion of the remaining containers is considered in the model to better fit the real application. The comparison between our model and the previous work are made on several performance indicators applied in literature, indicating the efficiency of our model while obtaining high-quality solution.