Container vessel stowage planning
AssigneeA.P. Moller-Maersk A/S
InventorsNicolas Guilbert, Benoit Paquin
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A computer-implemented method of determining an allocation plan for a cargo stowage problem of allocating a set of cargo items to a set of cargo item positions of a vessel, each cargo item position being suitable for receiving a cargo item. The method comprises constructing an expression indicative of one or more constraints to be satisfied by said allocation plan, constructing a cost function indicative of a cost of an updated allocation plan relative to a current allocation plan of said cargo stowage problem, iteratively updating a current allocation plan from an initial allocation plan to an updated allocation plan so as to decrease said cost function under said one or more constraints.
Claims50
A computer-implemented method for determining an allocation plan for a cargo stowage problem of allocating a set of cargo items to a set of cargo item positions of a vessel, each cargo item position being suitable for receiving a cargo item, the method comprising:
- providing an expression indicative of one or more constraints to be satisfied by said allocation plan,
- providing a cost function indicative of a cost of an updated allocation plan relative to a current allocation plan of said cargo stowage problem,
- iteratively updating a current allocation plan from an initial allocation plan to an updated allocation plan so as to decrease said cost function under said one or more constraints;
- wherein iteratively updating the current allocation plan includes iteratively updating the cost function.
A computer-implemented method for determining an allocation plan for a cargo stowage problem of allocating a set of cargo items to a set of cargo item positions of a vessel, each cargo item position being suitable for receiving a cargo item, the method comprising:
- determining a preliminary distribution plan indicative of how many cargo items of each of a set of predetermined cargo classes are to be loaded to each of a set of storage areas of a vessel, each storage area including a set of cargo item positions;
- providing said preliminary distribution plan as an input to a subsequent process for determining a refined allocation plan.
A computer-implemented method for generating a refined allocation plan from an input allocation plan for a vessel, the method comprising:
- providing a data structure for representing a current allocation plan, the current allocation plan being indicative of an allocation of a plurality of cargo items to respective cargo item positions of said vessel, and initializing the data structure to said input allocation plan;
- computing a refined allocation plan by iteratively swapping the allocated positions of respective pairs of cargo items in said data structure to produce respective alternative allocation plans, and by selecting a refined allocation plan as one of the alternative allocation plans with a decreased value of a predetermined cost function relative to the current allocation plan.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.