Robust Optimization Approach to Empty Container Repositioning in Liner Shipping

摘要: In global container liner networks, the costly operations of empty repositioning are necessitated by imbalance cargo flows across regions. Up to 40 and 60 % containers shipped from Europe North America Asia empty, respectively. Repositioning costs sizable, often amounting up 5–6 a shipping lines revenue. Therefore, identifying an optimal schedule rebalance with minimal cost is one most critical planning problems in shipping. This complicated stochastic nature demand long transportation lead times. this paper, we formulate multiple-stage programming problem for network. As highly complex, formulation not computationally tractable. utilize emerging techniques robust optimization provide tight approximation (bond) on version problem. The resulting second-order cone program (SOCP) With approximation, perform computational experiments evaluate effectiveness different policies.