The Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning Problem with Cargo Flows

摘要

We solve an important problem for the liner shipping industry called the Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning Problem (LSFRP). The LSFRP poses a large financial burden on liner shipping firms. During repositioning, vessels are moved between services in a liner shipping network. Shippers wish to reposition vessels as cheaply as possible without disrupting the cargo flows of the network. The LSFRP is characterized by chains of interacting activities with a multi-commodity flow over paths defined by the activities chosen. Despite its great industrial importance, the LSFRP has received little attention in the literature. We introduce a novel mathematical model of the LSFRP with cargo flows based on a carefully constructed graph and evaluate it on real world data from our industrial collaborator.