Container storage space assignment problem in two terminals with the consideration of yard sharing

Facing the shortage of storage space of container terminal yard, a yard sharing strategy that uses dry port?s surplus storage space to ease container congestion is proposed. This novel strategy can address the container storage space assignment problem for inbound containers. The problem is studied based on the storage yard of the combined container terminal and dry port. First, a multiple-objective mixed integer programming model that considers yard sharing strategy with the objectives of minimizing total travel distance, minimizing imbalance in number of containers, maximizing shared storage space of the dry port is formulated to obtain optimal solutions. Second, a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) is proposed. Next, the performance of the algorithm is verified by a set of instances. Numerical experiments are conducted to elucidate the problem with yard sharing strategy intuitively. Furthermore, the performance of the model in four aspects proclaims the advantages of yard sharing strategy and certifies the comprehensiveness. Finally, sensitivity analysis is conducted by two aspects which are weight coefficient and feasible distance to verify the efficiency of the proposed method.

Automated summary

The study introduces a novel yard sharing strategy to address the shortage of storage space in container terminal yards by utilizing surplus storage space at dry ports. By developing a mathematical model and using genetic algorithms, the optimization of container storage space allocation is achieved, demonstrating the effectiveness and advantages of this strategy in practical applications.