A Multi-Stage Approach for Empty Container Repositioning Under Coordination Among Liner Carriers

Abstract

This paper studies the empty container repositioning (ECR) problem considering the exchange of slots and empty containers among liner shipping companies. It is common for an individual shipping company to seek an optimal solution for ECR and cargo routing to maximize its own benefits. To achieve cooperation among shipping companies, a multi-stage solution strategy is proposed. With the inverse optimization technique, the guide leasing prices of slots and empty containers among shipping companies are derived considering the schedule of vessels and cargo routing. Based on the guide leasing price, a cooperative model is formulated to minimize the total cost, which includes the transportation cost for laden containers, the inventory holding cost, the container leasing cost, and the repositioning cost. All the involved shipping companies are expected to follow the best solution of ECR and cargo routing to achieve a cooperative and stable optimum. A real-world shipping network operated by three liner shipping companies is used as a case study with promising numerical results.

Optimization of empty container allocation for inland freight stations considering stochastic demand

“…The authors created large-scale linear programming by converting ECIP to numerous inventory management constraints. Du et al (2021) discussed a composite problem combining the schedule of vessels, cargo routing and ECIP. The above problem aimed to minimize the total cost (including transportation cost, inventory holding cost, container leasing cost, and container repositioning cost) under the alliance cooperation situation.…”

Optimization of Passenger-like Container Train Running Plan Considering Empty Container Dispatch

“…Shintani [25] discussed the planning of the container transportation network while considering the dispatch of empty containers. Du et al [26] considered the exchange of empty containers between liner shipping companies, proposed a multi-stage solution, and built a model to solve the transportation route of the goods.…”

Assessing the Eco-Efficiency Benefits of Empty Container Repositioning Strategies Via Dry Ports

“…Meanwhile, others have combined laden container shipping and liner shipping optimization problems with ECR (Shintani et al, 2007;Song and Dong, 2013;Song and Xu, 2012) in modeling optimized solutions. Collaboration between shipping lines has attracted recent attention within this track as well and provided positive results for individual shipping lines (Du et al, 2021).…”