Hybrid Genetic Simulated Annealing Algorithm (HGSAA) to Solve Storage Container Problem in Port

Container terminals play an important role in marine transportation; they constitute transfer stations to multimodal transport. In this paper, we study the storage of containers. We model the seaport system as a container location model, with an objective function designed to minimize the distance between the vessel berthing locations and the storage zone. Due to the inherent complexity of the problem, we propose a hybrid algorithm based on genetic (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) algorithm. In this paper, three different forms of integration between GA and SA are developed. In order to prove the efficiency of the HGSAAs proposed are compared to the optimal solutions for small-scale problems of an exact method which is Branch and Bound using the commercial software ILOG CPLEX. Computational results on real dimensions taken from the terminal of Normandy, Le Havre port, France, show the good quality of the solutions obtained by the HGSAAs.