Abstract
Ferries are an important structural element of the ferry transport technological system (TTS) and an integral part of the global navigation. Today, ferry transportation is widespread in Europe, the Baltics and the CIS countries. The most developed traffic on the maritime market is such freight and passenger ferries as ro-ro passenger and ro-pax ferries. Ferries are a linear fleet with a number of peculiarities that complicate the decision-making process on the formation of their loading. The features that do not depend on the ferry sailing region include diversified cargos, a composite cargo and passenger loading, a multitude of consignments from different shippers, a wide variety of tariffs, discounts and surcharges for transportation depending on many factors, and a set schedule of the ferry operation. The study presents an economic and mathematical model that maximally takes into account the specific features of organizing ferry transportation as well as the technical and operational characteristics of vessels. This is achieved by incorporating into the model structure those restrictions whose left side reflects the characteristics of the ferry and the line, whereas the right side reveals the parameters of the cargo and passenger traffic. In particular, it should be specified that a composite loading of the ferry with both cargos and passengers implies restrictions that prevent the carriage of passengers without a cargo or transporting cargos without passengers accompanying them. This peculiarity of ferry loading was disregarded in previous studies devoted to optimizing the loading of vessels. Furthermore, the control parameters, which are Boolean variables, used in the model help take into account the linear and mass characteristics of each cargo unit, which is caused by a wide variety of cargos within the same nomenclature. The specified peculiarities of the suggested economic and mathematical model make it applicable for both Ukrainian and foreign ferry operators. Furthermore, the model is open to any, if necessary, modifications depending on the requirements of individual companies due to addition or elimination of certain restrictions.
Highlights
Ferrying is an important part of international freight and passenger transportation as its use eliminates many problems associated with the delivery of oversized and heavy cargos while reducing the transportation costs and time
The vessel loading is characterized by diversified cargos, and the booking notes to book space aboard for transportation are served according to the line of various shippers and forwarding agents [2]
The study has revealed several peculiarities that facilitate the optimum utilization of ferries and were disregarded in [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], among which the main ones are the following:
Summary
Ferrying is an important part of international freight and passenger transportation as its use eliminates many problems associated with the delivery of oversized (lengthy and large-size) and heavy cargos while reducing the transportation costs and time. The analysis of the possible placement of cargo from each subsequent application and the formation of an operational plan for the vessel loading are carried out by the line agents using the standard features of the program MS Excel spreadsheet with the entry of a large number of exogenous parameters. In this regard, the decision-making process on the formation of the ferry loading at the planning stage of the work is characterized as:
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