Essential elements in tactical planning models for container liner shipping

• Published in: Transportation research. Part B: methodological Vol. 54; pp. 84 - 99
• Main Author: Wang, Shuaian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Container liner shipping; Exact sciences and technology; Fleet deployment; Ground, air and sea transportation, marine construction; Marine and water way transportation and traffic; Network design; Ship repositioning; Totally unimodular matrix; Transportation planning, management and economics; Totally unimodular matrix; Fleet deployment; Ship repositioning; Network design; Container liner shipping; Fleet; Linear programming; Mixed integer programming; Modeling; Design; Container ship; Transportation network; Container transportation; Experimentation; Numerical simulation; Planning; Maritime transportation
• ISSN: 0191-2615; 1879-2367
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2013.04.001

•Examine theoretically and numerically the essential elements.•Planning model with multi-type containers and ship repositioning.•Ship repositioning sub-problem has the integrality property. Tactical planning models for liner shipping problems such as network design and fleet deployment usually minimize the total cost or maximize the total profit subject to constraints including ship availability, service frequency, ship capacity, and transshipment. Most models in the literature do not consider slot-purchasing, multi-type containers, empty container repositioning, or ship repositioning, and they formulate the numbers of containers to transport as continuous variables. This paper develops a mixed-integer linear programming model that captures all these elements. It further examines from the theoretical point of view the additional computational burden introduced by incorporating these elements in the planning model. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the effects of the elements on tactical planning decisions. Results demonstrate that slot-purchasing and empty container repositioning have the largest impact on tactical planning decisions and relaxing the numbers of containers as continuous variables has little impact on the decisions.