Integrated container fleet management in transportation service systems

运输服务系统中的集装箱车队综合管理

• 批准号: EP/E000398/1
• 负责人: Dongping Song
• 金额: $ 27.54万
• 依托单位: Plymouth University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2006 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FE000398%2F1
• 关键词: Integrated; container; fleet; management; transportation

Maritime containers were first introduced in the 1960s. Since then, liner shipping went through a high growth phase, almost independent of the world economy. The rapid growth and globalisation in container shipping market gave rise to intense completion among key players such as shipping lines, port authorities, and logistics agents. In order to survive competition and gain more business, these players are forced to adopt innovative, productivity enhancing and cost-cutting strategies. At an operational level, a very important cost-cutting strategy is to efficiently and effectively manage the container fleet. Container fleet management is complicated due to dynamic operation, uncertainty and demand imbalance. Dynamic operation is the nature of the shipping industry. Uncertainty exists in customer demands and container processing activities such as consolidation, movement, handling, discharge, maintenance and repair. Demand imbalance is a particularly important problem in container shipping. For example, on the Europe-Asia trade route, European ports are experiencing a high surplus of empty containers, while Asian ports are facing severe shortage. Important decisions in container fleet management include fleet sizing, container leasing, laden container distributing and empty container repositioning. These decisions are highly related and should be carefully managed. On the one hand, increasing the number of owned containers, leasing extra containers and effectively repositioning empty containers can increase service capacity and meet customer demands. On the other hand, larger fleet size incurs capital and maintenance costs; container leasing incurs extra leasing costs; while repositioning incurs additional transportation cost. Gap 1: The majority of container management models in the literature focused on one component of container fleet management (e.g. empty container reposition). Container leasing was either implied or ignored. It was not treated as an explicit decision variable. The applicant believes that explicitly integrating the container leasing decision with other fleet management decisions is important since it will significantly affect the company's dynamic operations, particularly in stochastic situations where the effect is unpredictable. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an integrated container fleet management model including container-leasing decision for stochastic situations. Gap 2: The existing mathematical programming models for container / vehicle fleet management have on-line computation, communication and data requirements. In particular, the underlying logic of such models is often hidden from the operators. In other words, the structures of the container / vehicle dispatching policies are not intuitive. Some researchers applied heuristic rules that resemble the (s, Q) policy in inventory control theory to balance transportation equipment among locations. However, the sub-optimality of such decentralised policy was not fully studied and the policy was only applicable to certain specific cases. Hence, the second gap is the need to develop easy-to-operate container management policies and establish their optimality. The overall objective of the project is to develop an effective tool that is able to deal with container fleet management that includes fleet-sizing, leasing, distributing and reposition in an integrated way. The tool can help fleet managers to identify easy-to-operate and near-to-optimal policies.

海上容器是在1960年代首次引入的。从那以后，班轮运输经历了一个高增长阶段，几乎与世界经济无关。集装箱航运市场的快速增长和全球化使运输线，港口当局和物流代理等主要参与者的完成促进了人们的强烈完成。为了在竞争中生存并获得更多的业务，这些参与者被迫采用创新，提高生产力提高和削减成本的策略。在运营层面上，一种非常重要的削减成本策略是有效地管理容器机队。由于动态操作，不确定性和需求不平衡，容器机队的管理非常复杂。动态运营是航运业的本质。客户需求和容器处理活动中存在不确定性，例如合并，移动，处理，放电，维护和维修。需求不平衡是容器运输中特别重要的问题。例如，在欧洲 - 亚洲贸易路线上，欧洲港口正经历着大量的空容器，而亚洲港口正面临严重的短缺。集装箱机队管理中的重要决定包括机队尺寸，容器租赁，负载的集装箱分发和空容器重新放置。这些决定高度相关，应仔细管理。一方面，增加拥有的容器的数量，租赁额外的容器并有效重新定位空容器可以增加服务能力并满足客户需求。另一方面，较大的车队规模会造成资本和维护成本；集装箱租赁会产生额外的租赁费用；在重新定位时会产生额外的运输成本。差距1：文献中的大多数集装箱管理模型都集中在容器车队管理的一个组成部分（例如，空容器重新位置）。集装箱租赁是隐含或忽略的。它没有被视为明确的决策变量。申请人认为，将容器租赁决定与其他车队管理决策进行明确整合至关重要，这很重要，因为它将极大地影响公司的动态运营，尤其是在效果无法预测的随机情况下。因此，有必要开发一个集成的集装箱车队管理模型，包括用于随机情况的租赁集装箱的决定。差距2：用于容器 /车辆车队管理的现有数学编程模型具有在线计算，通信和数据要求。特别是，此类模型的基本逻辑通常是从操作员隐藏的。换句话说，容器 /车辆调度策略的结构不是直观的。一些研究人员应用了类似于库存控制理论（S，Q）政策的启发式规则，以平衡位置之间的运输设备。但是，这种分散政策的子次要性尚未得到充分研究，该政策仅适用于某些特定案例。因此，第二个差距是需要制定易于操作的容器管理政策并确立其最佳性。该项目的总体目标是开发一个有效的工具，该工具能够处理包括车队大小，租赁，分发和重新定位的容器机队管理，以集成的方式进行处理。该工具可以帮助车队经理确定易于操作和近乎最佳的政策。

项目成果

Quantifying the impact of inland transport times on container fleet sizing in liner shipping services with uncertainties

• DOI: 10.1007/s00291-009-0185-4
• 发表时间: 2012
• 期刊: OR Spectrum
• 影响因子: 2.7
• 作者: Jingxin Dong;D. Song