Container yard template planning under uncertain maritime market

A yard template determines the assignment of spaces in a yard for arriving vessels. Fluctuation of demand for freight transportation brings new challenges for making a robust yard template when facing uncertain maritime market. A model is proposed for yard template planning considering random numbers of containers that will be loaded onto vessels that visit the port periodically. Traffic congestions and multiple schedule cycle times for vessel arrival patterns are also considered. Moreover, a meta-heuristic method is developed for solving the model in large-scale cases. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate effectiveness and efficiency of the model.     

Policy and politics behind Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone Program

China launched the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) Program on September 29, 2013 in a bid to reduce administrative interventions, ease restrictions on investments, further open up its financial system, and internationalize its currency to booster shipping, logistics, and commerce. This article aims to present a background of the Shanghai FTZ and some reflections on it. China’s economic reconstruction has made a major impact on its port cities. Competitions between ports are gradually evolving into competitions between supply chains, with ports no longer considered as isolated links in the transport chain but rather as integral links in the supply chain. Ports are transitioning into fourth-generation ports with the establishment of logistics and value-added activities, which are developed in conjunction with local industrial and service businesses. In this trend, China’s port cities can provide a wide range of value-added services and become centers of commodity flow, capital flow, and information flow. Specifically, the combined effects of driving the development of peripheral industries and actively coordinating the activities of relevant parties help regulate the operations of the entire supply chain to obtain potential value-added benefits. The implementation of the Shanghai FTZ will not only stimulate trade but will also bring increased shipping and finance opportunities to the city. With free trade as the new direction and focus of the country’s economic initiatives, the Shanghai FTZ will hopefully lay the groundwork for a new round of reforms and restructuring of the Chinese economy.     

Container drayage problem with flexible orders and its near real-time solution strategies

This article studies a container drayage problem with flexible orders defined by using requiring and releasing attributes as a unified formulation of various order types. A determined-activities-on-vertex (DAOV) graph introduces a temporary vertex set to formulate different truck statuses. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model based on the DAOV graph. Four strategies including a window partition based (WPB) strategy are presented and evaluated extensively to solve the problem. Results indicate that the WPB method could solve the problem effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, this method is robust considering the operating time biases compared to other algorithms.     

基于快铁融合的上海铁路集装箱快运站选址研究

快铁融合可以充分发挥快递企业和铁路运输的优势,有效提升物流作业效率,达到运输资源分配平衡的效果,是多元化运输的发展方向。在既有和计划建设的铁路货运站中选择铁路集装箱快运站与快递企业集散网络衔接,以快递企业时间满意度和集散运输成本为目标,构建基于时间满意度的铁路集装箱快运站选址模型,以上海铁路集装箱快运站为例进行实证分析,提出保证铁路集装箱快运站与快递企业合理衔接的对策,为铁路集装箱运输融入快递市场提供决策支持,加速快铁融合的实施。     

Sailing speed optimization for container ships in a liner shipping network

This paper first calibrates the bunker consumption - sailing speed relation for container ships using historical operating data from a global liner shipping company. It proceeds to investigate the optimal sailing speed of container ships on each leg of each ship route in a liner shipping network while considering transshipment and container routing. This problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model. In view of the convexity, non-negativity, and univariate properties of the bunker consumption function, an efficient outer-approximation method is proposed to obtain an ε-optimal solution with a predetermined optimality tolerance level ε. The proposed model and algorithm is applied to a real case study for a global liner shipping company.     

The evolution of a regional container port system: the Pearl River Delta

This study investigates the progress of container port system development in South China, focusing particularly on the interplay between Hong Kong and the other ports in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. After identifying the downgrading trend of Hong Kong from a transshipment hub port for Asia and for China as a whole to a regional load center and the emergence of other deep-sea direct-service ports, the paper looks into the causes of this structural change of the port system. Four major causes are identified: the cost-base competition, the impact of the unique “one-country two-systems” policy, the impact of globalization and container standardization, and the impact of multi-modal accessibility and connectivity. The paper reveals that the interplay between different governments and between the governments and port operators are the local mechanisms that together as a whole respond to the shippers’ needs and the shipping lines’ pressure. It confirms that the interdependencies and competitive relations between terminals are being played out at a regional level. While the particular situation of the PRD is unique in many regards, the features emerging there, with its dominant hub, its network of feeder ports and its emerging direct-service non-hub terminals, are being replicated elsewhere.     

Reducing truck emissions at container terminals in a low carbon economy: Proposal of a queueing-based bi-objective model for optimizing truck arrival pattern

This study proposes a methodology to optimize truck arrival patterns to reduce emissions from idling truck engines at marine container terminals. A bi-objective model is developed minimizing both truck waiting times and truck arrival pattern change. The truck waiting time is estimated via a queueing network. Based on the waiting time, truck idling emissions are estimated. The proposed methodology is evaluated with a case study, where truck arrival rates vary over time. We propose a Genetic Algorithm based heuristic to solve the resulting problem. Result shows that, a small shift of truck arrivals can significantly reduce truck emissions, especially at the gate.     

Container storage and transshipment marine terminals

This study addresses the storage arrangement of transshipment containers on a container yard, in order to carry out efficiently the ship handling operations at a terminal where mega-containerships call. An optimization model is specified to investigate the flow of containers from the mega-containership to feeder ships using intermediate storage at the yard. A heuristic based on the lagrangian relaxation is formulated. The quality of the heuristic approach is tested in a number of experiments. In the experiments, various situations are analyzed with respect to mega-containership arrival rates, some strategies for stack arrangements and terminal layouts.     

Modeling and optimization of a container drayage problem with resource constraints

This paper investigates the problem faced by firms that transport containers by truck in an environment with resource constraints. The considered area is export-dominant. As a result, there are three types of container movements as inbound full, outbound full, and inbound empty movements. Both the time windows at the terminal and at the customers’ places and the operation times are considered. Empty containers are also regarded as separate transportation resources besides trucks. The total operating time including waiting time of all the trucks in operation is minimized. The problem is first formulated as a directed graph and then mathematically modeled based on the graph. It falls into a multiple traveling salesman problem with time windows (m-TSPTW) with resource constraints. An algorithm based on reactive tabu search (RTS) is developed to solve the problem. A number of randomly generated examples indicate that the algorithm can be applied to the real world.     

The strategic berth template problem

A marine container terminal operator may have a situation with excessive calling requests to be served especially when some new service contracts are under consideration. For this situation, we propose a strategic berth template problem (BTPS) that selects the ships among the requesting ones to be served and arrange their berth-windows within a limited planning horizon. The BTPS employs the subgradient optimization procedure, which is an improved version of the procedure that the authors developed for the operational berth allocation problem. A wide variety of numerical experiments indicate the improved subgradient procedure works well for the BTPS.