Conservative allocation models for outbound containers in container terminals

This paper examines location assignment for outbound containers in container terminals. It is an extension to the previous modeling work of Kim et al. (2000) and Zhang et al. (2010). The previous model was an ‘optimistic’ handling way and gave a moderate punishment for placing a lighter container onto the top of a stack already loaded with heavier containers. Considering that the original model neglected the stack height and the state‐changing magnitude information when interpreting the punishment parameter and hid too much information about the specific configurations for a given stack representation, we propose two new ‘conservative’ allocation models in this paper. One considers the stack height and the state‐changing magnitude information by reinterpreting the punishment parameter and the other further considers the specific configurations for a given stack representation. Solution qualities for the ‘optimistic’ and the two ‘conservative’ allocation models are compared on two performance indicators. The numerical experiments indicate that both the first and second ‘conservative’ allocation models outperform the original model in terms of the two performance indicators. In addition, to overcome computational difficulties encountered by the dynamic programming algorithm for large‐scale problems, an approximate dynamic programming algorithm is presented as well.