Optimization Of Empty Container Allocation By Sea Transportation Based On Resources Sharing In Liner Operators

Container transport is highly efficient, suitable for multiple modes of transportation and can also lower the cargo damage and loss. Owing to these competitive advantages, it has been in a favorable position in maritime trade. However, due to the imbalance in trade flows and inappropriate empty container repositioning, there have always been dramatic differences between the supply and demand of empty containers. Therefore, the container management costs remain high which has long plagued liner companies. To reconcile the contradiction between economies of scale and excess capacity, liner companies usually form strategic alliances aiming for resource synergy. In the context of liner company alliance, there are three ways to obtain empty containers:reposition the self-owned empty containers, borrowing empty containers from other alliance members or lease them from a leasing company.Based on the above analysis, liner companies need to optimize the combination of three empty containers acquisition ways so that they can acquire the greatest economic benefits. Because of the random change of empty container supply and demand, the empty container allocation process is dynamically discrete. This thesis adopted an empty container repositioning policy with flexible destination. Then the thesis established a model of optimizing the empty containers acquisition. The model aims at minimizing the total costs of empty containers acquisition within the alliance. The decisions include the combination of empty container acquisition ways and the empty container number of loading, unloading, borrowing and leasing in every port in each period. According to the model, the thesis designed a practical algorithm combining Dynamic Programming and Genetic Algorithm. The thesis also verified the validity of the algorithm by examples of the numerical value.This thesis not only made up the existing deficiencies of academic research in theory but also provided decision support of empty container repositioning for liner companies in practice.