You-Fang Huang（黄有方），Jian-Kun Hu（胡坚堃），Bin Yang（杨斌）

《Computers & Industrial Engineering》

Volume 89, November 2015, Pages 116–124

Maritime logistics and transportation intelligence

Abstract

Transportation demand of shipping container fluctuates due to the seasonality of international trade, thus, every 3–6 months, the liner company has to alter its current liner shipping service network, redeploy ships and design cargo routes with the objective of minimizing the total cost. To solve the problem, the paper presents a mixed integer linear program model. The proposed model incorporates several relevant constraints, such as weekly frequency, the transshipment of cargo between two or more service routes, and transport time. Extensive numerical experiments based on realistic date of Asia–Europe–Oceania shipping operations show that the proposed model can solve real-case problems efficiently by CPLEX. The results demonstrate that the model can reduce ship’s capacity consumption and raise ships’ capacity utilization.