Liner shipping service network design with empty container repositioning

Qiang Meng and Shuaian Wang

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2011, vol. 47, issue 5, 695-708

Abstract: This paper proposes a liner shipping service network design problem with combined hub-and-spoke and multi-port-calling operations and empty container repositioning. It first introduces a novel concept - segment - defined as a pair of ordered ports served by one shipping line and subsequently develops a mixed-integer linear programming model for the proposed problem. Extensive numerical experiments based on realistic Asia-Europe-Oceania shipping operations show that the proposed model can be efficiently solved by CPLEX for real-case problems. They also demonstrate the potential for large cost-savings over pure hub-and-spoke or pure multi-port-calling network, or network without considering empty container repositioning.

Keywords: Liner; shipping; network; design; Hub-and-spoke; Multi-port-calling; Transshipment; Empty; container; repositioning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554511000214
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transe:v:47:y:2011:i:5:p:695-708

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600244/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600244/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review is currently edited by W. Talley

More articles in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().