The Research On Inland-empty-container Depot Location

With the increasing fierce competition among container transport enterprises and the rapidly growing demand for integrated logistics of shippers, container transport enterprises gradually pay their attention to inland empty container transport. Empty container transport costs about50%of the cost for inland container management, which makes the management of inland empty container transporting the most important key to container management.Inland empty container depot has gradually become an important infrastructure while the inland empty container transportation network is developing continuously rapidly. Inland empty container depot can not only storage container, but also enrich the empty container transportation network in inland areas. It greatly reduces the the empty container transportation mileages between inland cities and the total cost of empty container transportation by making full use of transport infrastructure, in the meanwhile optimize the inland empty container allocation purposes.Based on the analysis of several inland empty container transportation and inland empty container depot location factors, this paper analysis the method for the location of inland empty container depot. Firstly, establish index system which consists of the factors and use fuzzy clustering analysis the candidate cities. Use the stochastic inventory control model to calculate the inventory of each inland city needed in the next period of time to find the actual number of empties which need to be transport. Then solve the model with program and the statistics. Lastly, the paper applies Tianjin Port as the hub port; Tianjin City, Beijing City, Hebei Province and Shanxi Province as the hinterland, in order to test the validity of the method.