Research On Optimization Of Water Transportation System Of Valin Steel

Valin Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd.(Valin Group) is composed of Hunan Valin Xiangtan Iron and Steel Co., Ltd., Valin LY Steel and Hengyang Valin Steel Tube Co. Ltd. At the beginning of incorporation in1997, Valin Group’s steel output was only2.36million tons. Over the past ten odd years of great-leap-forward development, Valin Group now ranks among the world’s top20steel makers, with steel output tallying15.43million tons in2011. According to the development strategy, in the next two years, Valin Group will further expand its steel output and increase iron ore import, thereby gradually improving steel exports. The rapid development of Valin Group raises higher demands on logistics, so the most pressing issue is to make logistics adapt to the development of the company.As the three subsidiaries are landlocked in different cities, railway transportations has always been the main logistics mode of Valin Group. Approximately70%iron ore imports are transported to the company via railway after unloaded in Ningbo Port, Zhanjiang Port and Port of Fangchenggang. However, along with expanding capacity and production scale, railway transport development has exhibited clear signs of backwardness and can hardly meet the higher demands on logistics resulting from its rapid development. As such, Valin Group has to leverage on advantages of water transportation, optimize water transportation system and expand waterway traffic to achieve the gold of guaranteeing the production requirements, reducing integrated logistics costs, improving logistics efficiency and competitiveness.This paper firstly gives the general background information of Valin Group and the market’s logistic demand, explains the supply flow of raw materials and products of Valin, and points out the existing problems and development tendency within. And then, it shows the two ways of transportation iron ore and the port choices for transition which allow Valin Group several ways of transporting iron ore. The article then analyzes the goal of Valin’s import iron ore shipping logistics system and the constrained conditions, established the minimum cost model of Valin steel shipping logistics system, and use the genetic algorithm to solve the model, selects the minimum cost scheme from a variety of water transportation schemes, which is the best scheme of Valin’s imported iron ore waterborne logistics system. At the last of the article a series of suggestions were put forward for the enterprise group from two respects. Improving the ability to import port, constructing overall logistics information system, cultivating talents of logistics, strengthen the corresponding with the port and the shipping companies, These measures and suggestions were put forward in order to ensure the new waterway project running smoothly.