Ship Route Schedule Based Interactions Between Container Shipping Lines and Port Operators

Abstract

This chapter examines a practical tactical liner ship route schedule design problem, which involves the interaction between container shipping lines and port operators. When designing the schedule, the availability of each port in a week, i.e., port time window, is incorporated. As a result, the designed schedule can be applied in practice without or with only minimum revisions. We assume that each port on a ship route is visited only once in a round-trip journey. This problem is formulated as a nonlinear non-convex optimization model that aims to minimize the sum of ship cost, bunker cost and inventory cost. In view of the problem structure, an efficient dynamic-programming based solution approach is proposed. First, a lower bound of the number of ships is determined, and then we enumerate all possible numbers of ships. Given the number of ships, we can construct a space-time network that discretizes the time and represents the design of schedule. The optimal schedule in such a space-time network can be obtained by dynamic programming. The algorithm stops when the lower bound is not smaller than the optimal total cost of the best solution obtained. The proposed solution method is tested on a trans-Pacific ship route.

The multi-port berth allocation problem with speed optimization and emission considerations

“…Hence their willingness to participate in such a scheme is likely higher than that of terminal operators. On this issue, Wang et al (2015a) proposes two collaborative mechanisms between container shipping lines and port operators to facilitate port operators to make proper berth allocation decisions. However, in order to achieve a good synchronization of berth availability, terminal operators have to be persuaded to commit themselves to such a collaborative scheme.…”

Schedule design for sustainable container supply chain networks with port time windows

“…None of the above four studies have considered the port time windows in schedule design. Wang et al [17] developed a dynamic programming approach to design a schedule for a single ship route with port time windows. However, they assumed that each port on the ship route can only be visited once, whereas in reality many ship routes have ports that are visited twice.…”

“…The third set of constraints considers the availability of berths: Constraint (17) indicates that an available berth cannot serve more than one ship on the same day. Constraint (18) requires that a ship uses exactly one berth each time it visits a port including the premium berth b.…”

Simultaneous Optimization of the Liner Shipping Route and Ship Schedule Designs with Time Windows

“…ey proved that the optimal speeds can be obtained in quadratic time. Wang et al [19] studied the liner ship schedule design problem with hard time windows. Wang et al [3] studied the same problem with consideration of the availability of each berth with the objective of minimizing the bunker cost, operating cost, and inventory cost for a single shipping route.…”

“…Constraints (17) and (18) indicate that all container shipping demands should be satisfied while ensuring the container flow balance. Constraint (19) indicates that the total number of containers loaded on each shipping leg should not exceed the capacity of one container ship.…”