Reliable design of container shipping network with foldable container facility disruption

Abstract

Foldable containers constitute an emerging technology that returns an operational benefit in terms of cost savings and green transportation by curtailing empty container movements. However, their facilities are vulnerable to unfavorable events caused by disruptive events, and often experience complete failure in practice. To guarantee a certain level of reliability in foldable container operations, this study focused on designing a reliable container network against facility failure for foldable containers. A novel integer linear programming formulation for the problem of reliable facility location with foldable containers is proposed by designing an objective function with failure patterns. In this problem, special handling manners for operating foldable containers are incorporated for repositioning activities. We comprehensively analyzed numerical experiments to illustrate trade-offs between cost savings and potential risks concerning reliability in supply of empty containers by using a mix of standard and foldable containers. The impact of the failure on foldable container facilities is jointly influenced by foldable and standard containers and the degree of failure probability.