Intelligent Modeling Essential to Get Good Results: Container Storage Inside a Container Terminal

The first steps in solving a decision making problem optimally are to construct an appropriate mathematical model for it, and then select an algorithm for solving that model. We will illustrate this with work on a project carried out at HIT (Hong Kong International Terminals) in Hong Kong Port which has won the Edelman Finalist Award from CPMS (College for the Practice of Management Science) of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Science) in 2004. But first we provide an account of how I became interested in “optimization.”