Vessel schedule recovery strategy in liner shipping considering expected disruption

Abstract

How to deal with disruptions in liner shipping service is a common operation problem faced by shipping companies. In particular, the spread of COVID-19 brings more uncertainty, and frequent disruptions have a great impact on global maritime trade. In this paper, a new mixed integer programming mathematical model is proposed to solve the Vessel Schedule Recovery Problem (VSRP) in liner shipping service, and a variety of recovery strategies are considered, including adjusting sailing speed, adjusting port productivity, port skipping and port swapping. In order to cope with the different scenarios in reality, we studied the disruption events that can obtain information in advance. A series of numerical studies were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results show that adjusting sailing speed and port productivity are always adopted, regardless of the scenario. In addition, port skipping is more used for disruption recovery, and port swapping is more used for expected disruption. A comparative analysis shows obtaining disruption information in advance can help vessel save up to 17.33%. The research results not only expand the theoretical research of the VSRP, but also provide scientific decision support for the operation of shipping companies.