Heuristic Optimization of Appointment Quota for Outbound Delivery at Container Terminals

• 1、College of Transportation Management, Dalian Maritime University
• 2、College of Business Administration, Capital University of Economics and Business

Abstract：As China is a typical outbound country in world trade, the problem of delivery truck appointment at container terminal is quite realistic and of Chinese characteristic. This paper deals with the difficult problem of quota optimization in outbound delivery truck appointment at container terminals. To cope with various deadlines of outbound vessels, two dimensional quota is proposed based on vessel and time window. The waiting time of all the trucks at yard is minimized as objective. And a non-linear integer planning model is set up. Based on the idea of smoothing arrival, a fast heuristic algorithm is developed to solve quota optimization of delivery truck appointment. Four sets of numerical experiments are undertaken, which proves the effectiveness of smoothing arrival algorithm. Comparisons with average algorithm demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithm. Especially under the trend of trade amount increasing and vessel enlarging, smoothing arrival algorithm has much significant adaptability.

Keywords： logistics system management container terminal delivery truck appointment appointment quota optimization heuristic algorithm