Research On Railway Empty Container Distribution

The optimization of railway empty container distribution is a complicated decision-making problem. Due to resource distribution, unbalanced development of regional economic, urban layout and so on, there is a great difference in the supply distribution and flow of China's container which results in container flow unbalanced in space and time and brings the problem of empty container distribution. The way of empty container distribution directly affects the operations of the entire transport chain. The Inappropriate way of empty container distribution not only resultes in an increase in the number of empty storage, will cost hundreds of millions of additional costs and a large number of empty waste of resources, but also makes a sharp increase in related costs, will have an important impact on economic efficiency of container transport. Thus, that researching on the way of railway empty container distribution has important practical significance. The paper uses optimization theory to research on empty container distribution in depth, puts forward the optimization model and algorithm. By example for the effectiveness of testing, we can conclude that model and algorithms can sovle the problem of empty container distribution well.This paper first discusses the current situation of empty container distribution, introduces the existing problems and significance of research. Meanwhile, the paper analyses empty container distribution detailedly,sums up the reason of empty container distribution, clears the core issue of empty container distribution, analyses the circulation process of empty container and costs of empty container distribution and demand and supply of empty container distribution system, establishes the target of empty container distribution. At the same time the paper introduces three commonly used methods of empty container distribution.Then, considering many factors in the process of empty container distribution, especially considering the specificity of country's major materials such as military transport, rescue and disaster relief supplies and so on, and dividing priority of empty container need according to the varieties of goods, the importance of the goods and so on, considering and satisfying high-priority need of empty container as far as possible, the paper establishes a more realistic optimization model for empty container distribution. In the model, the paper designs two objective functions which are the largest priority of need and the smallest cost of empty container distribution, and sums up four restrictions on the number of empty container we demand, the number of empty container we have and the transportation capacity of line. Through the encoding, fitness calculation, crossover design and genetic operator design, and ultimately the paper studies out optimization algorithm of empty container distribution.Finally, By An example the paper tests the validity of model and algorithm and gets a satisfying result which provides a valuable reference for the actual empty container distribution.