Global Container Transport Research Articles

Joint Optimization of Inventory and Repositioning for Sea Empty Container Based on Queuing Theory

Approximately 20% of global container transportation activities are used for empty container repositioning, which does not generate profit margins. For container supply ports, in addition to periodically transporting excess empty containers to container shortage ports to reduce their inventory costs and meet empty container demand of container shortage ports, they also need to maintain a certain amount of empty container inventory to meet their uncertain needs in the future. This paper considers the container supply port and container shortage port as a whole, so that the container supply port maintains a certain amount of empty container inventory to meet its own uncertain needs, and empty container repositioning is carried out based on this. Based on queuing theory, an empty container repositioning model was established with the objective function of minimizing the total cost of the empty container inventory system and the empty container repositioning system and designing genetic algorithms to solve the model. The results indicate that considering empty container inventory and repositioning as a whole resulted in a total cost reduction of approximately 7.2%. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted by changing the parameters in the model, and the results of the sensitivity analysis provided support for the decision-making of shipping lines in different situations.

Dynamic container drayage with uncertain request arrival times and service time windows

Container drayage plays a critical role in intermodal global container transportation, as it accomplishes the first- and last-mile shipment of containers. A container drayage operator dispatches a set of tractors and a set of trailers to transport containers within a local area. An important aspect of the operations is that the arrival times of service requests are uncertain, which means that the operator should respond to the requests dynamically. Moreover, since customers usually impose time windows on container pickup and delivery, it would be important to exploit the service flexibilities of requests when allocating resources in order to enhance the resource efficiency. In this paper, we study a dynamic container drayage problem that arises from the practical operations of container drayage. We develop a Markov decision process (MDP) model for the problem to capture the dynamic interactions between the drayage operator and the uncertain environment. For solving the MDP model, we propose a novel integrated reinforcement learning and integer programming method, in which reinforcement learning enables real-time responses to requests by determining whether each request should be served immediately upon arrival or be held for a period of time, while integer programming plans resource allocation periodically for serving the accrued requests. The proposed method aims to identify a fleet management policy that exploits requests’ service flexibilities to maximize the operator’s service capacity and profitability. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed method on instances generated from the operational data of a container drayage operator in Singapore.

Flexible yard management in container terminals for uncertain retrieving sequence

With the booming traffic of global container transport, the container port throughput keeps increasing too. As the key node of the maritime network, the handling efficiency of container terminal always determine the efficiency of the whole container transport. In order to improve the handling efficiency of the container terminal, the optimization of yard space is still a challenge for terminal manager. Generally, the whole export block is used to be separated into several clusters to store export containers for different loading liners. In former studies, the unit of template generated is always fixed clusters like subblock, and the concept of flexible loading cluster is seldom touched. The application of flexible loading cluster, where the number of bays, rows and tiers can be changed based on service requirement, is discussed in this research. Thus this study wants to find out the optimal choice of flexible loading clusters and better solutions for export container allocation. A bi-objectives model which considers both the transportation distance and the handling congestions is built. A heuristic approach is developed to solve the real-life cases. We emphasize the possible rehandles during loading process and it is concluded that the application of flexible loading clusters is efficient for uncertain retrieving sequence.

Evaluating Key Factors of Container Shipping Lines from the Perspective of High-tech Industry Shippers

Because of the changes in customers' needs and demands created by the development of container transport in the 1960s, the global container transport business has become increasingly competitive. With the high-tech industry ranged with one of the few competitive industries in Taiwan from 2002, container shipping lines have been forced to implement innovative operating patterns to meet the evolving demands of the high-tech industry shippers. This study conducts a survey questionnaire of domestic high-tech industry shippers to explore the different factors affecting their selection of container shipping lines, evaluating the key influencing factors by maritime marketing's 4C framework: customer needs, customer costs, customer communication, and customer convenience. It aims to detect the appropriateness of key influencing factors and the correlation between them for high-tech industry shippers selecting container shipping lines by the Fuzzy Delphi Method and the Revised Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (the Revised DEMATEL). The conclusions indicates management implications and recommendations for container shipping lines to develop future operating strategies.

Diagnosing and Forecasting the Prospects for the Development of the Global Container Transportation Market

The main trend in the development of domestic and global transport is the rapid growth of container traffic, which meets the requirements of a market economy. They become an integral part of the national or international commodity distribution and warehouse system, which ensures the uninterrupted delivery of various products to the trading network and goods of industrial and technical purpose to industrial production. According to experts from many countries, such transportation should embody the freight transport service of the XXI century. The growing demand for container transportation in Ukraine and in the world by manufacturers and consumers of various types of products and services requires the search for effective technical, technological and organizational solutions.
 A promising direction of container transportation is a unified system of container terminals (CT) created on the traffic routes of container-transportable cargoes. In addition, the problem of improving the quality of service due to the increased competition from other categories of transport is of particular importance.
 In a market economy and industry restructuring, there is a need for a new approach to address these issues, which would allow for reducing the cost of container ports and increasing their attractiveness for users. The importance of addressing these issues for the container transport industry determines the importance of this study.
 Topical problems of the current state and developments of the global market of container transportations are discussed. The largest container ports in the world are determined using the data on their throughput and the dynamics of the total capacity of container vessels in the maritime trade. The data on operation of the largest shipping companies in the world are analyzed. Index Baltic Dry is proposed for forecasting the global market of container transportations, which measures traffic volumes of bulk carriers; it is proposed to create support container terminals for the largest companies that would represent a single system of alliances rather than an isolated transport and logistics company.

A scenario discovery study of the impact of uncertainties in the global container transport system on European ports

The global container transport system is changing quickly. Ports can be severely affected by these changes; therefore, ports need insight into how the system might change and what the impact of this will be on their competitive position. Given the intrinsic complexity of the container transport system and the presence of a wide range of deeply uncertain factors affecting the system, we use an exploratory modeling approach to study future scenarios for the global container network. Using scenario discovery and worst-case discovery, we assess the implications of various uncertain factors on the competitive position of the port of Rotterdam. It is found that overall the competitive position of Rotterdam is quite robust with respect to the various uncertain factors. The main vulnerability is the quality of the hinterland connections. A modest deterioration of the quality of the hinterland connections, resulting in increased travel time, will result in a loss of throughput for Rotterdam.

Game Theory Analysis of Container Port Alliance

ABSTRACT Xu, F.; Lu, H.; Ding, N., and Liu, J., 2015. Game theory analysis of container port alliance. Since the reform and opening up, China's transport industry has developed rapidly. For many years, it has been the largest country that demands for container transport in the world. As an important node in the global container transportation network, the status of our container ports has become increasingly important in the world. However, with the decline of external demand in recent years and the reconstruction of China's economy, it has promoted that the competition among the various shipping companies become increasingly fierce. This paper applies the game theory to the container port in the enterprise. Through analyzing the interest among container ports, some suggestions are put forward to promote the development of the container ports.

Pricing in sustainable global container transport

The last decade has witnessed an increase in the consideration of environmental factors in global transportation and shipping, mostly as a consequence of regulation and media attention. Policy measures and the threat of public indictment have acted as powerful incentives for transport operators to green their global supply chains. It can be argued though the effective environmental measures are those that are embedded in the company business thinking, and not those only imposed by law. The present paper is the attempt to operationalise this idea in the context of global container transport. In particular, the paper argues that in order to integrate environmental factors in global logistics processes it is necessary to link them to the concept of value delivery through adequate pricing mechanisms. The paper also discusses how non-traditional forms of pricing are a valuable method to integrate the environmental dimension in container shipping and logistics value propositions.

Immunity-based evolutionary algorithm for optimal global container repositioning in liner shipping

Global container repositioning in liner shipping has always been a chal- lenging problem in container transportation as the global market in maritime logistics is complex and competitive. Supply and demand are dynamic under the ever chang- ing trade imbalance. A useful computation optimization tool to assist shipping liners on decision making and planning to reposition large quantities of empty containers from surplus countries to deficit regions in a cost effective manner is crucial. A novel immunity-based evolutionary algorithm known as immunity-based evolutionary algo- rithm (IMEA) is developed to solve the multi-objective container repositioning prob- lems in this research. The algorithm adopts the clonal selection and immune suppression theories to attain the Pareto optimal front. The proposed algorithm was verified with benchmarking functions and compared with four optimization algorithms to assess its diversity and spread. The developed algorithm provides a useful means to solve the problem and assist shipping liners in the global container transportation operations in an optimized and cost effective manner.

Developing bi-level equilibrium models for the global container transportation network from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders

Given the importance of containerisation to creating successful global supply chain operations, this paper proposes an equilibrium model that can not only minimise the total container transportation cost for a shipper, but also maximise the total profit accrued from container transportation services offered by a carrier. The proposed model combines game theory with a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to promote a compromise between the conflicting interests of the carrier and the shipper, while optimally balancing the shipper's desire to contain cost against the carrier's desire to increase profit. To verify the usefulness of the proposed model, we applied it to the container transportation network design problem from the perspectives of multiple stakeholders including Chinese container port authorities.

Immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm for multi-objective optimization in global container repositioning

The development of evolutionary algorithms for optimization has always been a stimulating and growing research area with an increasing demand in using them to solve complex industrial optimization problems. A novel immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm known as Hybrid Artificial Immune Systems (HAIS) for solving both unconstrained and constrained multi-objective optimization problems is developed in this research. The algorithm adopts the clonal selection and immune suppression theories, with a sorting scheme featuring uniform crossover, multi-point mutation, non-dominance and crowding distance sorting to attain the Pareto optimal front in an efficient manner. The proposed algorithm was verified with nine benchmarking functions on its global optimal search ability as well as compared with four optimization algorithms to assess its diversity and spread. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to investigate the selection of key parameters of the algorithm. It is found that the developed immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm provides a useful means for solving optimization problems and has successfully applied to the problem of global repositioning of containers, which is one of a constrained multi-objective optimization problem. The developed HAIS will assist shipping liners on timely decision making and planning of container repositioning operations in global container transportation business in an optimized and cost effective manner.

The Potition of Hong Kong's Mid-Stream Operation in Global Container Transportation

The Potition of Hong Kong's Mid-Stream Operation in Global Container Transportation