A placement heuristic for a commercial decision support system for container vessel stowage

Decision support systems have become a viable approach to tackle complex optimization problems. The combination of experts' know-how and efficient optimization algorithms can dramatically improve solution quality and reduce work time. Some of these systems rely on continuous interaction with their users and almost all require fast feedback from the optimization algorithms. We propose a placement heuristic that serves as the optimization component of a decision support system to interactively generate container vessel stowage plans, a complex problem with high economical impact within the shipping industry. Our experimental evaluation shows that the placement heuristic is fast enough for interactive optimization and produces solutions that are competitive with expert users.