Optimisation in Container Liner Shipping

Mulder, Judith; Dekker, Rommert

doi:10.4324/9781315601540-12

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…This works the other way as well, given that shippers prefer ports that are well-connected by carriers' networks. Furthermore, shipping lines have their own considerations that underpin their planning at the strategic, tactical, and operational level (Mulder and Dekker, 2017), including port selection criteria. Many of these relate to location (accessibility and berth availability), effectiveness (terminal efficiency, infrastructure quality), connectivity (deep-sea, short-sea, and hinterland connections) (Wiegmans et al, 2008;Martínez Moya and Feo Valero, 2017), and other factors including the planning of alliance partners (Panayides and Wiedmer, 2011), operational considerations such as repositioning empty containers, and subjective preferences (Button et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Carriermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Maximize chain profits (Talley and Ng, 2013); berth availability; handling efficiency; terminal costs; shipper satisfaction; make or buy decision -buy capacity at multi-user terminal or invest in own handling capacity (Wiegmans et al, 2008); negotiations with terminals, price agreements, alliance configurations (European Commission, 2009; Panayides and Wiedmer, 2011); ease of doing business (Hupkens, 2017) Chooses ports through network design and can decide on port choice for containers shipped under carrier haulage. Aims for chain profits (Talley and Ng, 2013); port location and network compatibility (Mulder and Dekker, 2017), accessibility, berth availability (dedicated terminals), cargo volume availability (shipper preferences), distance from origin and destination markets (Malchow and Kanafani, 2001); port costs, range of services (Tongzon and Sawant, 2007); handling efficiency (Tang et al, 2011); carrier strategy, alliance agreements, hinterland connections (Wiegmans et al, 2008;Panayides and Wiedmer, 2011); constraints and incentives presented by port authority (Talley and Ng, 2013) Terminal operator Depends on shipping line clients Depends on multi-user or single-user (dedicated) terminal (Wiegmans et al, 2008); multi-user terminal can do business independently with carriers Multi-user terminal: price negotiations (Fung et al, 2003;European Commision, 2009); shipping line alliances (Panayides and Wiedmer, 2011) n.a.…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

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Divergent effects of container port choice incentives on users' behavior

2019

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Port choice decisions are often considered to be based on unambiguous choice criteria. The authors examine how port users' evaluation of these criteria can differ and how this may affect actors' incentive structure and decision making, and ultimately port performance. Apart from ports' physical characteristics, the paper considers port policy and freight market conditions as components of actors' incentive structures. As port users interact, each actor's decision making has consequences for the incentives offered to others-with an important role for strategic behavior. The aggregate of port users' decisions affects a port's throughput, cargo composition, and value added, and has implications for handling efficiency. This paper combines these insights within an overarching framework linking port characteristics, policy, and freight market conditions to port user choice behavior and the consequences for ports. The paper explores various facets of this framework using the case of how the Port of Rotterdam competes along the Hamburg-Le Havre range, drawing on port throughput data on various levels of detail and in-depth interviews with a representative selection of port stakeholders. It shows that there is a downside to ports being particularly attractive to carriers, in that the port that offers the most incentives to carriers disproportionately attracts relatively low-value activities: inefficient calls and a large share of empty containers, along with a strong import/export imbalance. Interview findings contextualize the findings from the data and elaborate further on the mechanisms underpinning these observations. Most importantly, the attractiveness of a port for carriers does not always translate into attractiveness for shippers. The challenge for port policy is to balance the port's positioning toward its different categories of users and achieve a congruent value proposition for all port users.

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Section: The Carriermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

Divergent effects of container port choice incentives on users' behavior

2019

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“…In this section, we first sketch the decision hierarchy in liner shipping and then zoom in to the problem on which we will focus. The decisions on top of the hierarchy are trade selection and fleet design, which are considered to be strategic problems (see, e.g., Christiansen, Fagerholt, and Ronen 2004;Notteboom and Vernimmen 2009;Mulder and Dekker 2018), followed by the liner service design problem that combines strategic and tactical decisions. Ducruet and Notteboom (2012) provide a clear overview of the decisions that are considered in the liner service design problem-namely, the determination of (1) the type of liner service network, (2) the loops (also: routes/round tours) (i.e., how many ports are visited together with the selection of those ports and the determination of the order), (3) the vessel speed, (4) the frequency, and (5) the allocation of vessels.…”

Section: Conceptual Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After the loops have been decided on, liner companies start to negotiate with terminals to make agreements on berthing times, such that they can design a cyclic schedule with arrival and departure times and publish a timetable to their customers. In this paper, we are interested in this latter problem, which arises at the tactical planning level and needs to be solved once every 6-12 months (Mulder and Dekker 2018). At the operational level, ships subsequently encounter delays, and decisions are taken on their actual speed to avoid large deviations from the timetable.…”

Section: Conceptual Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simultaneous Optimization of Speed and Buffer Times with an Application to Liner Shipping

Mulder

Jaarsveld

Dekker³

2019

Transportation Science

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Transport companies often have a published timetable. To maintain timetable reliability despite delays, companies include buffer times during timetable development and adjust the traveling speed during timetable execution. We develop an approach that integrates timetable development and execution. We model execution of the timetable as a stochastic dynamic program (SDP). An SDP is a natural framework to model random events causing (additional) delay, propagation of delays, and real-time optimal speed adjustments. However, SDPs alone cannot incorporate the buffer allocation during timetable development, as buffer allocation requires choosing the same action in different states of the SDP. Motivated by the practical need for timetables that operate well during timetable execution, our model seeks the buffer allocation that yields the SDP that has minimal long-run average costs. We derive several analytical insights into the model. We prove that costs are joint convex in the buffer times, and we develop theory to compute subgradients. Our fast and exact algorithm for buffer time allocation is based on these results. Our case study considers container vessels sailing a round tour consisting of 14 ports based on Maersk data. The algorithm finds the optimal timetable in roughly 70 seconds for realistic problem instances. The optimal timetable yields cost reductions of about four to 10 million U.S. dollars per route per year in comparison with the current timetable. Finally, we show the robustness of our solution approach for different parameter settings using a sensitivity analysis.

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“…If a stowage plan is suboptimal, precious revenues will be lost and safety jeopardised. And as the maritime industry is undergoing digitalisation with various onboard decision support systems becoming standard, the optimal stowage problem has attracted attention in the area of operational research (OR) [2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal stowage on Ro-Ro decks for efficiency and safety

Puisa

2018

Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology

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The roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) ships are true workhorses of coastal and deep-sea shipping. They are valued for their versatility to transport heterogeneous cargo and short turnaround times in ports. However, the optimal utilisation of cargo space has been inherently problematic with the Ro-Ro concept. In view of the existing attempts to contrive optimal stowage plans, the paper proposes three practical improvements with respect to the state of the art. The improvements lead to a finer approach to ship stability, fire safety, and cargo handling efficiency when optimising cargo stowage on Ro-Ro decks. Formally, we express the stowage problem as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem and solve it to optimality. The paper outlines the mathematical formulation, provides a numerical example, and studies practical application aspects.

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Optimisation in Container Liner Shipping

Cited by 11 publications

References 1 publication

Divergent effects of container port choice incentives on users' behavior

Divergent effects of container port choice incentives on users' behavior

Simultaneous Optimization of Speed and Buffer Times with an Application to Liner Shipping

Optimal stowage on Ro-Ro decks for efficiency and safety

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