Research On Key Problems Of A Company’s Zhejiang Empty Container Transportation System

The global container liner shipping industry has developed rapidly in recent years. Container ship develops to be larger, faster and more professional, the cost of container transportation has been improved at the same time, which has ranked second among all the transportation costs, only after port expenditure. In order to reduce the transportation cost of empty containers and maximize the profit, reasonable activities including container making, container renting, container transportation scheduling and maintenance are required. The shipping company need to dispatch empty containers between ports and yards regularly due to the supply-demand imbalances.In this paper, the research is on the transportation scheduling of empty containers in A company’s Zhejiang regional. Two modes of empty container transportation between nodes are considered, which are highway and railway transportation. Container scheduling combined with container renting are used to meet the requirements of clients. First, combination forecast method is used to predict the amount of empty containers and the demands, which provides data support for the next study. Then, considering the factors including the restriction of inventory capacity and transpotation capacity, a Integer programming model is established to minimize the costs of container scheduling and renting during the planning period. Genetic algorithm and Visual C++ are used to solve the problem, which proves to be feasible and effective. Finally, an empty inventory model is established to calculate the container safety inventory quantity in the prot area, which provides a direction for actual operation.