• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.59-79
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• 2005

Export containers in a container terminal are usually classified into a few weight groups and those belonging to the same group are placed together on a same stack. The reason for this stacking by weight groups is that it becomes easy to have the heavier containers be loaded onto a ship before the lighter ones, which is important for the balancing of the ship. However, since the weight information available at the time of container arrival is only an estimate, those belonging to different weight groups are often stored together on a same stack. This becomes the cause of extra moves, or rehandlings, of containers at the time of loading to fetch out the heavier containers placed under the lighter ones. In this paper, we use machine learning techniques to derive a classifier that can classify the containers into the weight groups with improved accuracy. We also show that a more useful classifier can be derived by applying a cost-sensitive learning technique, for which we introduce a scheme of searching for a good cost matrix. Simulation experiments have shown that our proposed method can reduce about 5$\sim$7% of rehandlings when compared to the traditional weight grouping method.