Cemalettin ÖztürkF. Zeynep SargutMustafa Arslan OrnekD. T. EliiyiOzturk, CemalettinSargut, F. ZeynepOrnek, M. ArslanTürsel Eliiyi, DenizEliiyi, Deniz Tursel2025-10-062017030888390308-88391464-525410.1080/03088839.2017.13410612-s2.0-85020525919https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85020525919&doi=10.1080%2F03088839.2017.1341061&partnerID=40&md5=e6b127a51144de73ca676f58e29f0829https://gcris.yasar.edu.tr/handle/123456789/9646https://doi.org/10.1080/03088839.2017.1341061Due to economical and/or geographical constraints most of the time overseas containers cannot be directly shipped to their destinations. These containers visit transhipment ports where they are first unloaded and temporarily stored and then loaded onto smaller vessels (feeders) to be transported to their final destinations. The assignment of these containers to outbound vessels necessitates several factors to be taken into account simultaneously. In this paper we develop a mathematical model to reflect multiple objectives with priorities and to assign these containers to different vessels at the transit container port terminal. Although we solve a single-objective (with the weighted sum of objectives) mathematical model to optimality we also propose two heuristic approaches to solve this complex problem for a transit agency. The first heuristic is shipment based and has four variants differing in how the opportunity costs of the assignments are calculated. The second greedy heuristic is trip based where the goal is to maximise the capacity utilisation of the vessels. The heuristics return very promising solutions in ignorable computational times. We also provide real-life cases and present our conclusions. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Englishinfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessContainer Assignment, Container Terminal Operations, Heuristic Algorithm, Integer Programming, Optimisation, Algorithm, Cargo Handling, Computer Simulation, Container Ship, Container Terminal, Heuristics, Numerical Model, Optimization, Port Operation, Shippingalgorithm, cargo handling, computer simulation, container ship, container terminal, heuristics, numerical model, optimization, port operation, shippingHeuristic AlgorithmContainer AssignmentOptimisationInteger ProgrammingContainer Terminal OperationsArticle