A Research On Containership Slot Allocation With Revenue Management

Container vessel slot allocation is one of the most important problems for the shipping companies. It has drawn great attention from the scholars and the enterprises. With the current fierce competition, the space for freight increasing is limited, and it is costly to reposition empty containers due to trade imbalance. Therefore, many shipping companies are seeking out the methods that can increase revenue, decrease cost and promote competition. It is the basis for applying revenue management to container vessel slot allocation. In contrast to the huge fixed costs, variable cost in container shipping industry is very low, so to compare with the fixed cost, the marginal cost is very small. Then the shipping companies can make furthest profits via the maximized revenue and apply revenue management to container vessel slot allocation for the cost stability.Through the systematic analysis of container slot allocation allocating empty containers, this paper finds out the reasonable tactics and methods to solve the problems, which provide decision-making proofs for the shipping enterprises.The paper firstly introduces the related conception of revenue management and the feasibility of applying revenue management to shipping transportation, and analyzes the main influencing factors of slot allocation. Then with Pure Integer Linear Programming it sets container slot allocation optimization model which considers empty container reposition factor. Using LINGO8.0, the model is computed and analyzed on the data of a practical example, and a reasonable result is reached. Then the analysis of changing some factors in model helps deepen comprehension.