A Soft Optimization Model to Solve Space Allocation Problems in Breakbulk Terminals

In recent decades, freight transportation systems have been developed rapidly. This development leads to using various policies to enhance system utilization. The studies show that an optimized policy related to space allocation benefits the shareholders in freight transportations. The objective of space allocation problems is to find the best arrangement of cargos in warehouse cells to meet the problem aims. In this paper, inspired by the Office Space Allocation problem, we developed a novel model to minimize the handling costs and to maximize available spaces for the next arriving cargo. We first formulate the optimization model and discuss various constraints. We then present an approach to solve the proposed model. Lastly, we analyze a numerical example derived from the data of Port of Beaumont to illustrate the efficiency of the model.