Solving the Container Pre-Marshalling Problem Using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Abstract

In a container terminal occurs the Container Pre-Marshalling Problem (CPMP), which deals with the necessity of the container reshuffling in order to reduce the later movements when containers must be retrieved. Then, CPMP is a minimization problem for finding a reshuffling sequence from an initial bay layout (disordered) to a final bay layout (ordered) according to certain conditions that must satisfy the retrieve preferences of containers. This problem is known to be NP-Hard, therefore solving such as problem could be a very hard task and extremely complex, with high execution time and use of computational resources. Thus using metaheuristics approaches could be a good choice for tackling this problem. We have selected the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm for tackling the CPMP, showing good results that competes the state of the art works in regards of its solution qualities.