Design And Implementation Of Optimized Algorithm And Interface For Container Stowage

Container stowage is a key process in the supply chain that loads a quantity of cargos which have different volume, weight and value into the container which has limitations on bearing weight and volume, which contributes to the competitiveness of logistics providers and the development of logistics industry. An investigation to some logistics provider reveals that currently no practical stowage solution applies to the industry. Therefore, the decision of stowage solution heavily relies on the experience of operators. This is especially the case when a logistics provider has to deal with huge amount of less-than-container-load (LCL) cargos. Lack of feasible and practical stowage solution greatly increases the cost and hinders the industry development on a large scale. Based on the above background, this thesis focuses on container stowage and intends to design an optimized algorithm to give a feasible and practical stowage solution.This thesis researches the loading and packing problem in great detail and then narrows the research domain to "loading non-homogeneous cargos into a single container with complex restrictions". The narrowed problem aims to load more cargos into a single container to maximize the space utilization of container without violating the restrictions and other requirements. The thesis proposes a genetic algorithm with human-computer interaction (GAHCI) concerning the disadvantages of neglecting the positive effect of human-computer interaction (HCI) in solving the problem and ignoring some practical restrictions in reality relating to the previous research. The GAHCI method adequately considers the NP-hard computation complexity of the problem, the hard-to-formalize practical restrictions in reality and the usefulness of operators' experiences in container stowage and intends to provide an effective interface that facilitates the combination between HCI and the intelligent optimized algorithm such as genetic algorithm. The algorithm designed in the thesis is to give a feasible solution with moderately optimal quality that aids the operator in the business process.Computational experiments demonstrate the algorithm described in the thesis is effective for solving container stowage problem with moderately good solution and desirable time cost. Verification of the interactive operations has been successfully carried out using the prototype package. In comparison to other published results, GAHCI competes with advantage to a certain point in the domain of container stowage.