Abstract:
Considering that inland origin-destination (OD) pairs involve a change in transport mode from inland transportation to maritime shipping, a network model of container liner transport is built to optimize the shipping line network and reduce the cost. Logit model and integer liner programming are utilized to convert inland OD demand to port-to-port demand and build a network evaluation of container liner transport. To minimize the total cost, the model needs to satisfy the constraints of shipping demand, transit time at loading port or discharging port and arranging rational capacity, and IOLG CPLEX optimization software is used to solve the computational model. The model is then used to redesign a company′s original network. The optimization result shows that, on the basis of the total volume approximately staying the same, the fleet size reduces from 81 to 77 and ship number from 289 to 269, which indicates that this model can effectively lower operating cost of container shipping and has great practical meaning.