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Empty Container Management in Cyclic Shipping Routes

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Abstract

This paper considers the empty container management problem in a cyclic shipping route. The objective is to seek the optimal empty container repositioning policy in a dynamic and stochastic situation by minimising the expected total costs consisting of inventory holding costs, demand lost-sale costs, lifting-on and lifting-off charges, and container transportation costs. A three-phase threshold control policy is developed to reposition empty containers in cyclic routes. The threshold values are determined based on the information of average customer demands and their variability. A non-repositioning policy and three other heuristic policies are introduced for purposes of comparison. Simulation is used to evaluate the performance of empty repositioning policies. A range of numerical examples with different demand patterns; degrees of uncertainty, and fleet sizes demonstrate that the threshold policy significantly outperforms the heuristic policies.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (grant numbers EP/E000398/1 and EP/F012918/1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Shipping & Logistics Group, Business School, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

    Dong-Ping Song & Jing-Xin Dong

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  1. Dong-Ping Song
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  2. Jing-Xin Dong
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Song, DP., Dong, JX. Empty Container Management in Cyclic Shipping Routes. Marit Econ Logist 10, 335–361 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/mel.2008.11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/mel.2008.11

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