Abstract
Decentralized freight decision has been proved to be one of the inhibitors to achieve a sustainable transport network. One important method also a key challenge is to determine how to coordinate and consolidate the transportation flow to get the best logistics performance. This study presents an intermodal transportation network considering freight consolidation through freight forwarders’ cooperation. We formulate the problem as a minimum intermodal transport cost model, which is a nonlinear, nonconvex and discontinuous function that involves volume economies of scale, distance economies of scale and vehicle size economies of scale. A hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm in combination with a batch strategy are used to solve the problem. Five different transport demand scenarios are tested on a real case on “China Railway Express” (Crexpress). The choices of reasonably corridor and fleet size combination are provided.
Highlights
Well-functioning transport networks and corridors are essential for sustainable transport network design
A collaborative intermodal transportation network is designed, which is applied in oil and gas equipment industry
As the diversity of product size and shipment volume provides an opportunity to realize economies of scale through freight consolidation, freight forwarders collaboratively plan for the entire freight transportation network by determining their corridor and vehicle arrangement strategies in pre-haulage, transshipment link, main-haulage and post-haulage, accounting for the handling capacity at competitive terminals
Summary
Well-functioning transport networks and corridors are essential for sustainable transport network design. A single carrier usually operates one kind of transportation mode, so their cooperation without information about the market and public carriage usually cannot minimize the total logistics cost of the whole network These cooperation mechanisms do not apply to the freight forwarders’ cooperation, because the corridor choice and vehicle arrangement strategies are seldom considered in the collaborative transportation network, which can be used to improve the performance of the generated consolidation scheme further. The corridor-fleet choice problem in a collaborative intermodal transportation network is formulated as a minimum transport cost (MTC) model with the optimization objective of minimizing the total transport cost of the whole system. A collaborative intermodal transportation network representation considering freight consolidation between origin terminals is described, where a freight forwarder serves as a central decision maker coordinating transportation activities.
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