Empty Container Management at Ports Considering Pollution, Repair Options, and Street-Turns

Bernat, Norberto Sáinz; Schulte, Frederik; Voß, Stefan; Böse, Jürgen W.

doi:10.1155/2016/3847163

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Zheng, J et al [5] used a reverse optimization method to determine the optimal total cost of empty container repositioning by considering the coordination between liner carriers. Sainz Bernat, N et al [6] studied empty container repositioning considering emissions, maintenance, repair options and street-turns. In terms of land transportation, Dang, Q.V et al [7] proposed three inventory strategies to study empty container repositioning under an inland multi-yard system and solved the model with a genetic algorithm.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed Robust Chance-Constrained Empty Container repositioning Optimization of the China Railway Express

Xing

Cai

et al. 2020

Symmetry

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In order to reduce the total cost of empty container repositioning, a multi-period empty container repositioning optimization model of the China Railway Express was established by using distributed robust chance-constrained programming based on partial information such as mean and variance of demand. This established model considered sea-land intermodal transportation, uncertain empty container demand and foldable containers. To simplify the model, the distributed robust chance constraints were transformed into equivalent ones that could be easily solved, and the empty container demands were determined. Numerical experiments were carried out to analyze the influence of different parameters on the total cost. The results showed that the total cost could be greatly reduced by sea-land intermodal transportation. Using foldable containers could reduce the total cost of empty container repositioning. With the improvement of service level, the numbers of empty container repositioning increased owing to the distributional robust chance constraints. When standard and foldable containers were used simultaneously, the total cost could be greatly reduced by appropriately using foldable containers under three different supply–demand relationships of containers. The optimization results may provide a greatly feasible reference for the decision makers of the China Railway Express.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed Robust Chance-Constrained Empty Container repositioning Optimization of the China Railway Express

Xing

Cai

et al. 2020

Symmetry

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“…From our knowledge, this article is the first one to investigate this option. The street-turn strategy is traditionally studied from a shipping line perspective (Deidda et al 2008, Furi o et al 2013, Jula et al 2006, S ainz Bernat et al 2016.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Time‐Based Policy for Empty Container Management by Consignees

Legros¹,

Bouchery²,

Fransoo

2019

Production and Operations Management

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D espite the many advantages of containerization for goods transportation, the management of empty containers is a major disadvantage, driving costly repositioning operations. We investigate the potential for consignees to manage an inventory of empty containers at their location so as to enable direct reuse of these containers by consignors located in the surroundings. One difficulty is that the detention fees imposed by shipping companies under merchant haulage are nonlinear. Moreover, cleaning and related activities might be necessary if the consignee keeps some empties. These difficulties incentivize consignees to immediately return containers to the sea terminal. Contrary to this practice, we show that managing containers via time-based threshold policies can save costs. Without cleaning costs, we prove that a time-based policy with a timeout return time is optimal. We next develop a policy improvement approach to include the cleaning costs in the analysis. This results in a two-thresholds time-based policy where the two time thresholds control the admission into and rejection out of the inventory. We next analyze the impact of this proactive management on the level of direct container reuse. This practice enables a high level of direct reuse. It also reduces container repositioning costs. Yet, the incentive to implement our policy varies a lot from one setting to another. In particular, low cleaning costs or high repositioning costs lead to significant costs improvement when implementing our policy. Finally, we further explore if the incentive could be made stronger by modifying the structure and/or purpose of the detention costs.

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“…Hence, both demand and supply should be described as uncertain parameters when addressing ECRP. To incorporate the stochastic nature of empty container repositioning, many efforts have been made to explore stochastic ECRP models (e.g., [17][18][19]28,[31][32][33][34]). Crainic et al [23] focused on the ECRP that involved stochastic demand and supply modelled as random variables in the context of the land transportation of international maritime shipping.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, the research on ECRP with CO 2 emissions is still scarce, both practically and theoretically. To the best of our knowledge, only Song and Xu [41], and Bernat et al [34] studied CO 2 emissions whilst repositioning empty containers. Song and Xu [41] provided an operational activity-based method to calculate CO 2 emissions in relation to ECRP, and revealed the relationship among CO 2 emissions, empty container repositioning policies, and handling capacity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Song and Xu [41] provided an operational activity-based method to calculate CO 2 emissions in relation to ECRP, and revealed the relationship among CO 2 emissions, empty container repositioning policies, and handling capacity. More recently, Bernat et al [34] presented new periodic review policies integrating CO 2 emissions, repair option, street-turns, as well as stochastic parameters. A simulation model with metaheuristic approach was then developed to assess the optimality of these policies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Stochastic Empty Container Repositioning Problem with CO2 Emission Considerations for an Intermodal Transportation System

2018

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As one of main challenge for carriers, empty container repositioning is subject to various uncertain factors in practice, which causes more operation costs. At the same time, the movements of empty containers can result in air pollution because of the CO2 emission, which has a negative impact on sustainable development. To incorporate environmental and stochastic characteristics of container shipping, in this paper, an empty container repositioning problem, taking into account CO2 emission, stochastic demand, and supply, is introduced in a sea–rail intermodal transportation system. This problem is formulated as a chance-constrained nonlinear integer programming model minimising the expected value of total weighted cost. A sample average approximation method is applied to convert this model into its deterministic equivalents, which is then solved by the proposed two-phase tabu search algorithm. A numerical example is studied to conclude that the stochastic demand and supply lead to more repositioning and CO2 emission-related cost. Total cost, inventory cost, and leasing cost increase with the variabilities of uncertain parameters. We also found that the total cost and other component costs are strongly dependent on the weights of repositioning cost and CO2 emission-related cost. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis is conducted on unit leasing cost.

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Empty Container Management at Ports Considering Pollution, Repair Options, and Street-Turns

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

Distributed Robust Chance-Constrained Empty Container repositioning Optimization of the China Railway Express

Distributed Robust Chance-Constrained Empty Container repositioning Optimization of the China Railway Express

A Time‐Based Policy for Empty Container Management by Consignees

Stochastic Empty Container Repositioning Problem with CO2 Emission Considerations for an Intermodal Transportation System

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