Abstract
This paper examines a practical tactical liner ship route schedule design problem, which is the determination of the arrival and departure time at each port of call on the ship route. When designing the schedule, the availability of each port in a week, i.e., port time window, is incorporated. As a result, the designed schedule can be applied in practice without or with only minimum revisions. This problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear nonconvex optimization model. In view of the problem structure, an efficient holistic solution approach is proposed to obtain global optimal solution. The proposed solution method is applied to a trans-Atlantic ship route. The results demonstrate that the port time windows, port handling efficiency, bunker price and unit inventory cost all affect the total cost of a ship route, the optimal number of ships to deploy, and the optimal schedule.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies |
Volume | 41 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2014 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Container liner shipping
- Containership scheduling
- Mixed-integer nonlinear programming
- Port time windows
- Schedule design
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Civil and Structural Engineering
- Automotive Engineering
- Transportation
- Computer Science Applications