Optimization of container stowage using simulated annealing and genetic algorithms

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimization of container stowage plan problem for a container vessel with multiple ports of call. Generally, container vessels visit many different ports on their voyage. Due to the loading and offloading at each port, finding the stowage planning for container vessel is getting more difficult for each subsequent port and also the complexity in stowage planning increases. For that reason, container stowage problem is called NP-hard problem. Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing Algorithm are implemented herein to obtain the optimum solution. After finding the optimum solution from these two algorithms, the results are compared to evaluate their computational cost and efficiency