OCBLA: A Storage Space Allocation Method for Outbound Containers

In container yard, the way of allocating space for outbound containers determines the transport efficiency of containers and the management cost. The existing space allocation methods usually have problems such as low computational efficiency, large number of shifts etc. This paper proposes an outbound containers’ block-location allocation (OCBLA) method to solve this problem, it has two steps, including allocating a block for containers which arrive at the same time and transported by the same vessel and allocating the specific location for each container. The first step aims to balance the load among blocks and reduce the cost of transportation, and last step uses ITO algorithm to reduce the number of shifts. The ITO algorithm regards every optional place as a moving particle and uses drift operator to control particle moving in the direction of the optimal place, wave operator to control particle exploring around. Having a tendency to explore makes the algorithm to find the optimal result in a limited number of tests, thus improving the computational efficiency. Through experiments it can be seen that this method can reduce the number of shifts during the process of container stacking, and get better results while having good real-time performance.