Prototype Expert System Containership for Stowage Planning. Technical Report

摘要

The report presents details of the development of a prototype expert system for providing decision support to containership planning. The stowage planning expert system was written in TURBO PROLOG and was developed on the basis of loading configuration of an actual ship route provided by Farrell Lines. The constraints and guidelines incorporated into the rule system included interference, physical support, weight, grouping, overstowage and backloading requirements. The technical approaches, solution strategies, processing algorithms, program control and interfaces, are implemented in the program and documented. Four test cases were performed. In all cases, the same container booking data and vessel geometry were used. The cases varied in the way they were solved by adopting different solution strategies. The performance of the program was evaluated on the basis of the number of overstow faults which appeared in the computer-generated stowage plans. As a result of the evaluation it was concluded that the methods used in the prototype have produced a program which is efficient and compact.