Improved Rehandling Strategies for the Container Retrieval Process

This article proposes some improved rehandling strategies to be implemented in container retrieval, an essential part of container terminal operations. The authors introduce the problem by noting that the amount of bulk cargo carried in containers and transported overseas has recently increased because of changes in trade barriers among countries as well as flexibility and reliability of this type of transportation. The authors develop strategies to minimize the total time required to retrieve the containers from a bay in a predetermined sequence. For example, there may be other containers on top of the container to be retrieved, and there may be alternative locations for those containers to be relocated. The authors use a branch and bound-based algorithm, and propose alternative heuristics that give near-optimal solutions. They tested the algorithms on randomly-generated 8000 bay configurations with 200 different combinations of parameters.