Deriving decision rules to locate export containers in container yards

A methodology is proposed to determine the storage location of an arriving export container considering its weight. We consider the configuration of the container stack and the weight distribution of containers in the yard-bay. A dynamic programming model is formulated to determine the storage location to minimize the number of relocation movements expected for the loading operation. We also develop a decision tree from the set of the optimal solutions to support real time decisions. The performance of the decision tree is evaluated by the number of decisions that are different from the optimal solutions of the slower dynamic programming solution method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.