Container Stowage Planning and how it works

Container Stowage Planning and how it works

This is a topic of great importance and is my favorite activity in the whole realm of shipping operations..

What is Stowage planning – simply put – it is the act of allocating space to containers on board of a container ship in the
order of the discharge ports..

Tools required :

1. the scheduled list of ports that the ship will be calling at, in the order of rotation

2. a summary of the number of containers – size/type/weight of containers per port that are planned to be loaded
on the ship

3. a summary of the number of hazardous, reefer and oog containers per port that are planned to be loaded on
the ship

4. List and summary of containers that are on board after discharge of the containers at your port.. for the
purposes of this article, we will consider this port to be Durban..

Definitions :

Profile – is the cross sectional view of the entire ship covering both the deck and under-deck of the ship..

Bay plan – is the complete cross sectional view of the entire ship covering both the deck and under-deck of the ship,
but displayed or printed per bay

Bay – each container vessel is split into compartments which are termed as Bay and depending on the size of the ship it
will proceed from 01 to 40 (for example) where Bay 01 is the bay towards the Bow (the front) of the ship and Bay 40 is
the Stern (the back) of the ship.. Odd numbered bays (1,3,5 etc) means that it is a 20’ stow and Even numbered bay
(2,4,6 etc) means that it is a 40’ stow..

Confused..?? Look at the below picture.. I have used Bay 09/11 (10) and Bay 13/15 (14) as an example here.. What you
are seeing here is the cross section of the ship both on deck and under deck.. Each of the small square blocks
represents a 20’ unit space..

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 Container Stowage Planning and how it works

Row is the position where the container is placed across the width of the ship.. If you refer to the above diagram, the
Row numbers are circled in Red.. It starts with 01 in the centre and progresses outwards with odd numbers on the right
and even numbers on the left..

Tier denotes at which level the container is placed – basically how high the container is stacked on board.. In the above
diagram, the Tier numbers are circled in Blue..

Hatch Covers (the dark intermittent lines in the above picture) are the covers that separate the deck from the under-
deck.. The area above the line is called the deck (which is generally visible to us when we look at the ship) and the area
below the line is called under-deck (which is not visible to us from outside the ship)..

The planning is mainly done on a document called a “profile” which can be viewed here.. The profile provides the full
cross section of a ship at one glance.. The enlarged version of this will be the actual bay itself.. Currently, the stowage
planning is mostly done via computers..

Although the computers do most of the work, the basis on which they work is the tried and tested methods that have
been followed for many years around..
 the list of containers that are to be loaded on board are segregated by destination..
 space is allocated to each of the containers
 firstly in the order of destination – the farthest destination at the bottom and the next port
of call right on top
 secondly in the order of weight – the heaviest boxes at the bottom and lightest at the top
For reasons of lashing and securing containers, a 40’ container can sit on top of two 20’s, but two 20’s cannot sit on top
of 40’ (unless it is under deck and surrounded by other containers or within cell guides)..
In the above profile i have used various alphabets and colors.

1. Ffor Felixstowe
2. A for Antwerp
3. Ae for Antwerp Empty
4. H for Hamburg
5. Lfor Le Havre
6. R for Rotterdam
7. X to indicate that its a 40’ contr..

The rotation for this vsl is Felixstowe, Antwerp, Le Havre, Hamburg and Rotterdam.. So as you can see, Felixstowe
containers are stacked right on top of other containers as this will be the first port of call after Durban.. And Rotterdam
will be the last port of call hence it is right at the bottom of the heap.. In this fashion the entire ship is filled with the
containers that are to be loaded at each load port while also taking into account the containers that are ALREADY
present on board from the previous ports.

If you notice, there is a container in stow position 130612 (Bay 13, Row 06, Tier 12 – for further info on how to read the
bay plan, please read my other article http://shippinginsouthafrica.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/identifying-a-stow-
position/).. Let’s assume that this container was wrongly stowed or a restow was requested at a later stage to now
discharge this in Felixstowe.

In order to reach this container, all containers above it on deck (8 containers to Antwerp and 4 contrs to Le Havre) must
be “restowed” (taken off the ship and landed on the wharf side and put back on board once this box is taken out).. Then
the hatch cover has to be opened to reach this one container.. As you can imagine, this involves considerable cost and
wastage of time for the ship..

So to avoid these costs and wastage of time, it is highly imperative that the right destination, right weight, and haz info if
any is accurately passed onto the ship..

Each of the bays have deck stress or tier weight which is the maximum allowed weight that each of the tier/row can
carry as per the design of the ship.. For example if there are about 4 containers in a tier each weighing 26 tons, it may
not be possible to accommodate all 4 in one tier as this might affect stability due to the heavy nature of the cargo..
However, if there are 5 tiers of empty containers as shown in Bay 15, it might be possible to load.. These calculations
will be performed by the computer itself and it will show up as errors..

Some of the most commonly used software for ships planning are CASP and Bulko.. These use the BAPLIE file format
structured by UNEDIFACT..

Identifying a stow position

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 Container Stowage Planning and how it works

I am not sure if you have noticed, but som e of the people in the industry can identify where a container has been stowed
on board of a ship just by reading the stow position (also known as cell position) and also whether it is a 20’ or a 40’
container that is stowed there.. How they do this..?? Its simple really..

090482 is an example of a stow position.. This is basically divided into 3 parts

09 / 04 / 82 – where 09 is the bay, 04 is the row and 82 is the tier – translated in English it means :-

Bay = each container vessel is split into compartments which are termed as Bay and depending on the size of the ship
it will proceed from 01 to 40 (for example) where Bay 01 is the bay towards the Bow (the front) of the ship and Bay 40 is
the Stern (the back) of the ship.. Odd numbered bays (1,3,5 etc) means that it is a 20’ stow and Even numbered bay
(2,4,6 etc) means that it is a 40’ stow..

Confused..?? Look at the below picture.. I have used Bay 09/11 (10) as an example here.. What you are seeing here is
the cross section of the ship both on deck and under deck.. Each of the small square block represents a 20’ unit space..
The bold lines represent the hatch covers that separate the deck (is the part where containers are loaded, that is visible
to us when you see the ship) and under deck (which is not generally visible when you are standing outside the ship)..

Row is the position where the container is placed across the width of the ship.. If you refer to the above diagram, the
Row numbers are circled in Red.. It starts with 01 in the centre and progresses outwards with odd numbers on the right
and even numbers on the left..

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 Container Stowage Planning and how it works

Tier denotes at which level the container is placed – basically how high the container is stacked on board.. In the above
diagram, the Tier numbers are circled in Blue..

Getting back to our stow position 090482 now – in the above diagram you will see that stow has an alphabet R – which i
have used for the port of Rotterdam (each line, vessel or chief officer have their own alphabets for the ports).. So what i
am saying here is that in stow position 090482 there is 20’ container that is stowed for discharge at Rotterdam..

So when you see a stow position as above you will know

09 = bay number and container is a 20’ (because its an odd number).. If it shows for example 10 then the container is a
40’..

04 = row number

82 = tier number which denotes that this is a 20’ container which is stowed ON DECK.. Usually ON DECK tier number
starts from 80 and increases by 2 per tier, so it will be 80, 82, 84, 86 etc.. If the tier number shows 02,04,06 etc then its
stowed UNDER DECK..

Let’s look at a couple of scenarios from the above diagram..

Scenario 1 = 090482 is a 20’ container stowed ON DECK on Bay 09, Row 04 and Tier 82 – container is going to R for
Rotterdam.

Scenario 2 = 110482 is also a 20’ container stowed ON DECK on Bay 11, Row 04 and Tier 82 which is basically the
adjacent bay to the Rotterdam container and this container is going to L for Le Havre..

Scenario 3 = 090102 – which is a 20’ container stowed UNDER DECK on Bay 09, Row 01 and Tier 02 which is bottom
most tier and this container is going to D for Dublin..

Scenario 4 = 100484 – is a 40’ container in stowed ON DECK on Bay 10, Row 04 and Tier 84 and this container is
going to F for Felixstowe.. This container is basically sitting on TOP of the Rotterdam and Le Havre containers.. Since
this is a 40’ container and sitting across both 9 and 11 bays , this bay is given the number 10.. The container is shown
as sitting on 9 but the corresponding slot on 11 is marked with an X which means that this slot is NOT available for
placing another container because there is a 40’ container already there..

For reasons of lashing and securing containers, a 40’ container can sit on top of two 20’s, but two 20’s cannot sit on top
of 40’ (unless under deck and surrounded by other containers or within cell guides)

So this is how a stow position is coined and how you identify whether a container is a 20’ or 40’ and whether it is stowed
under deck or on deck just by reading the stow position provided..

Optimizing a container-ship stowage plan using genetic algorithms

Abstract
Short sea shipping is prone to be one of the areas of development for the transportation policy of the European Union in
the near future. Nevertheless, in order to be able to make its stand on the market, there are several problems that have
to addressed, namely its safety and economic viability. To study the second, a genetic algorithm may be applied to the
Optimization of the stowage plan of a small container-ship that visits several ports, aiming to reduce the period of call on
each port, but not neglecting the vessel’s stability and safety.

Keywords: genetic algorithms, short sea shipping, container stowage problem, master bay plan

1-Introduction
Today, according to the European Transport Commission, short sea shipping represents40% of the intra-EU exchanges
in terms of ton-kilometers. Nonetheless, there are still funding programs, such as Marco Polo, that intend to fund
projects which shift freight transport from the road to the sea, rail and inland waterways. In truth, it is estimated that for
Euro of Marco Polo funding generates social and environmental benefits worth six or more times as much. It is believed
that the short sea shipping concept could be applied to the Portuguese internal trade, if a small enough containership
with good sea keeping and stability characteristics would visit several cities from North to South of the littoral, where
most population is
Concentrated.
On the other hand, the economical viability of such model, in comparison with road transport, can only be ensured by
reducing the loading and unloading time of containers and by considering ship designs with good seakeeping

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 Container Stowage Planning and how it works

performance, in order to maintain the vessel running for as much time as possible, even in unfavorable environmental
conditions.

Therefore, it is necessary to develop a tool that can be used in the viability analysis of the logistic system of freight
transportation by sea and to define the containership design concept.

2. Available methods
The Container Stowage Problem (CSP) can be explained as the problem of assigning several containers of various
types and weights, to slots on a containership with limited space and stability characteristics, meaning the heavier
containers should be stacked bellow the lighter ones. During its journey, the containership visits several ports of call and
at each one some containers are unloaded and others are brought on board. During this procedure, the aim is to spend
as little time as possible and to move as little containers as possible, commonly known as overstows, bearing in mind
the previously mentioned stability requirements, which ensure the safety of personnel and cargo.
In the literature several approaches to this problem may be found. One of the first was presented by Wilson and Roach
(1999), who proposed a method based on Tabu search within the cargo-space of a container ship until each container is
specifically allocated to a stowage location. More recently Gümüs et al. (2008) made a review of the several methods
dividing them into simulation based approaches, combining simple loading heuristics with simulation methods, rule-
based systems, using the methods of artificial intelligence and metaheuristics, and mathematical-programming
based approaches, using the methods of mathematical programming with relaxations of difficult constraints.

Nonetheless, it is believed that for a viability study such as the one being proposed, the method presented in Nobre,
Martins, et al. (2007) can be used, where genetic algorithms are applied to solve the problem.

3. Genetic Algorithms Implementation Method

As explained before, the CSP is an optimization problem that aims to minimize the overstowage and the time of loading
and unloading containers each time the ship visits a port, and therefore the definition of the objective function is trivial, if
the time to move any container is considered to be constant, bearing in mind that to move one container, all other
containers stack above it must be moved also.

As far as the stacking characteristics and the number of containers to be transported for each port, this may be
considered as a set of “quantity” restrictions that limit the number of containers stowed at each row and column,
reducing the problem to two dimensions of determining the position of each container in a matrix of “rows x columns”,
where each stack (column) can be placed anywhere on the ship, as long as its longitudinal and transverse
positions are known.

These restrictions are complemented by another group of “stability” restrictions which ensure navigation safety. In fact,
they are implemented by limiting the ship’s vertical position of the center of gravity, the angle of trim (bow - stern) and
the angle of heel (port – starboard), that change due to container distribution, since each one has its own weight.
Once all the restrictions are defined, a set of possible solutions, the “initial population”, is evaluated, attributing each
distribution of containers a penalty if any of the restrictions are not verified, and selecting the ones with less penalties.
The selected ones are than changed by pre-defined “crossover” and “mutation” functions, obtaining a “new
generation” of possible solutions. Once again, this new set of different containers distribution is evaluated and
changed, starting an iteration process that will end after a predefined number of “generations”, i.e. loops.

All in all, this method was validated in Nobre, Martins, et al (2007), when the genetic algorithm solution for the CSP
problem of 12 containers was compared with the “Microsoft Excel Solver” solution, ensuring that for a larger problem the
same method can be used to obtain good solutions.

4. Conclusion
It was proven that the CSP problem could be solved using genetic algorithms.Consequently, there is an easy enough
tool to be used in the study of the design of small containerships and short-sea-shipping routes to be applied between
several Portuguese ports.

www.panbras.com.br
Contact: Manuel.espinoza@panbras.com.br
Te.: (55 13)8133-9461/7807-8299 Nextel: 55*131103*23