The Allocation Of Foldable Container Under The Framework Of Sea-rail Intermodal Transportation

The increasing global economic growth and the expanding global trade net has increased the transport demand rapidly in recent years. The containerization of world sea cargo becomes an unstoppable trend. The booming development of containerization promoted the explosion of the global trade to a large extent. However, in the transportation process, the import and export amount as well as the container size among ports and terminals are imbalanced, and the circulation of containers is inefficient. This increases the allocation of empty container in the transportation system. With the current intense competition of shipping industry, for the shipping enterprise, adopting more reasonable management methods to optimize the system of empty container allocation, reduce the costs of empty container allocation is an important way to reduce the shipping operation costs and improve the enterprise efficiency.In this paper, we try to discuss the empty container redistribution problem from a new perspective. Foldable containers is a new perspective on reducing container-repositioning costs. Based on previous studies, this thesis improves the analysis framework. First of all, this paper made a summary of the concept and characteristics of foldable container and discussed every influencing factor of choosing foldable container configuration in common transportation modes of joint sea-and-rail transportation. On this basis, this paper build the foldable container allocation models. Then An example problem is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed model. And by using LINGO software, it gets the calculation results of the model. At last it analyses the calculation results. The result shows that the foldable containers can be a new perspective on reducing container-repositioning costs under the certain market conditions. Results of the sensitivity analysis show that the the size of the empty container transportation and the price of the foldable container are the key influence factors.In all, this paper tried to help the shipping companies to reduce the cost of empty container allocation and improve its competitiveness. It has the vital significance for the shipping companies especially under the competitive market environment this years.