The support of containerization to trade development demands an efficient solution method for the container loading problem in order to reduce shipment and handling time. Hence, the stowage planning of containers is critical to provide speedy delivery of resources from the area of supply to the area of demand. Moreover, information on container terminal activities, structure of ship, and charac…
A distributedconstraintoptimizationproblem(DCOP)isadescriptionofconstraintoptimizationproblem where variablesandconstraintsaredistributedamongagroupofagents,andwhereeachagentcanonly interactwithagentsthatshareconstraints.EventhoughDCOPshavebeenstudiedsincethe1990s,there are onlyafewattemptstoaddressrealworldproblemsusingthisformalism,mainlybecauseofthe complexityofthesolutionalgorithms.Inthispa…
Truck queuing at marine terminal gates has long been recognized as a source of emissions problem due to the large number of trucks idling. For this reason, there is a great deal of interest among the different stakeholders to lessen the severity of the problem. An approach being experimented by some terminals to reduce truck queuing at the terminal is to provide live views of their gates via we…
Multi-Agent systems have been studied extensively, but only a few of these systems are deployed in practice. Essential to get a system implemented is acceptance. In a distributed setting this is challenging, especially when one deals with multiple independent and competing companies. We share our experiences with the use of a real-time multi-player simulation game that we developed to illustrat…
A multi-agent system (MAS) for supporting the planning of transhipments of imported finished vehicles via a seaport is presented. The focus is on storage allocation, i.e. the allocation of parking areas for the temporary storage of vehicles, and on deployment scheduling, i.e. the allocation of drivers to the vehicles that have to be moved in the terminal area. These planning tasks, which in pra…
The integration of business processes across multiple companies can provide economic benefits, thus ensuring the sustainability of the involved companies. However these advantages are accompanied by many potential risks. For instance, emerging disruptions within a supply chain can spread over several partners resulting in economic losses. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development…
The integration of business processes across multiple companies can provide economic benefits, thus ensuring the sustainability of the involved companies. However these advantages are accompanied by many potential risks. For instance, emerging disruptions within a supply chain can spread over several partners resulting in economic losses. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the development…