Group-Bay stowage planning problem for container ship

Stowage planning is the core of ship planning. It directly influences the seaworthiness of container ship and the handling efficiency of container terminal. As the latter step of container ship stowage plan, terminal stowage planning optimizes terminal cost according to pre-plan. Group-Bay stowage planning is the smallest sub problem of terminal stowage planning problem. A group-bay stowage planning model is formulated to minimize relocation, crane movement and target weight gap satisfying both ship owner and container terminal. A GA-A* hybrid algorithm is designed to solve this problem. Numerical experiment shown the validity and the efficiency.