Efficiency evaluation of a new approach for cargo routing with empty containers repositioning

Abstract

The cargo routing and empty repositioning problems are important to growth of world market and competitive differentials of the container transporting. This paper aims to evaluate the efficiency of a new approach for an integrated model to cargo routing and empty containers repositioning. We formulated the proposed optimization model as binary-mixed linear programming based on a network multi-commodity model additionally with capacity constraints. Considering the complexity of this problem compared to models available in the literature, the results proved the model efficiency in computational time and main measures of demand and capacity. We understand the model as efficient to solve problems of large instances, assisting real decisions with robustness. The solving time increases significantly with increasing demand, occurring more containers repositioned in order to more profitable cargos can viability a repositioning decision. The main complexity of the model is related to integer variables of cargo routing decisions.