Study On The Optimization Of Empty Container Reposition For Liner Company Under Uncertain Environment

With the rapid development of the global economy,world trade has grown rapidly in a very active manner,especially maritime trade.Sea transport is the most economical and convenient mode for bulk cargo transportation and long-distance transportation.In the development of maritime industry,containerization has greatly promoted the booming of maritime trade with its safety and convenience.At the same time,it improves the efficiency of cargo operation and facilitates automatic management.However,container transportation provides convenience for the goods transportation and also has an increasing impact on the profitability of liner companies.Due to the imbalance of global industrial structure distribution and trade,some containers that have been put into circulation are not effectively utilized.Meanwhile,a large number of goods are waiting to be packed.Therefore,a reasonable arrangement of container empty container allocation plan is a major problem in the development of liner companies.Timely and efficient empty container management is especially important for liner companies to reduce operating capital and improve customer satisfaction.Empty container reposition is a problem with multiple factors.This paper starts from the view of the liner company,aiming at the uncertainty of the supply and demand of empty container repositioning,and considering the liner company to get empty container from other liner companies at a lower cost.The model is constructed by using robust optimization theory,and based on satisfying the customer's empty container net demand,and the goal is to minimize the total cost of empty container reposition.The genetic algorithm is used to solve the model,and the route,quantity,container quantity and inventory of empty container are decided.Finally,an example is given to verify the robustness of the model.The results show that the proposed model has good robustness when the disturbance occurs,and the maximum robust cost is only 6.01%.When disturbance degree is constant,by analyzing the change of various costs with the conservative degree,we can find that uncertainty factors have great influence on the number and stock balance of empty container reposition decisions for liner company.