Feeder vessel management at container transshipment terminals

The feeder vessel management problem consists of designing preferred berthing positions and service time for cyclically visiting feeders, and allocating storage yard space to the transshipment flows between mother vessels and feeders. We consider the above three tactical decision problems simultaneously for a container transshipment terminal with an eye toward the quayside congestion and the housekeeping cost of container movements. The integrated problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming model and solved by a memetic heuristic approach. A comprehensive computational experiment is conducted to show the effectiveness of the heuristic and the improvement upon real-world terminal operations.

► Introduce a tactical feeder vessel management problem. ► Integrate feeder schedule, berth allocation and container storage template designs. ► Develop a mixed-integer programming model. ► Design an efficient and effective memetic heuristic.