New Concept of Container Allocation at the National Level: Case Study of Export Industry in Thailand

This paper presents container allocation technique of which minimizing the total opportunity loss of an export industry in Thailand. This new allocation concept applies as a strategic management tools at the national level since it is consistent to the characteristics of the container supply chain management in Thailand. The first section of this paper presents the review of facts and problems of container supply chain management. It reveals that containerization system is significant to the international trade as it holds good characteristics of sea transportation. It can transport a lot of products while minimize the damage of goods. Supply chain management of the containerization system presents and shows that there are four main players in managing the container – principal, port, container depot, and customer. After an intensive review of containerization system’s problem, the most common problem that all parties have encountered is an imbalance between demand and supply of container. The well-known solution to the stated problem is relocation of containers between various places using optimization technique, which aims to minimize operation cost. Indeed, those solutions are unable solve the containerization system’s problem in Thailand: lacking their own fleets: having no bargaining power in relocating container between areas as needed. In the present, many of Thai exporters face with losses of sales or profit because they cannot find enough or proper containers to transport their goods to the customer. The authors, therefore, have seen that those problems need to be strategically solved by the government. The limited number of containers must be properly allocated to the exporter with regard to the minimum losses to the economics of the country. The main contributions of this paper are two folds. First, the opportunity losses of the various export industry are indicated when lack of containers, Second, the mathematical model has been formulated using linear programming technique with several constraints, such as, demand, supply, obsolete time, operating cost, lead time etc. The authors hope that the new concept presented in this paper will provide the great contribution for other countries, which face the same problem of Thailand. Keywords: Container Management, Opportunity Loss, Allocation Problem, Optimization, International Trad

Otimização de rotas de distribuição marítima de curta distância

Mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão IndustrialA presente dissertação tem por objetivo o desenvolvimento de uma heurística para resolução do problema de Container Stowage and Ship Routing Problem (CSSRP). O transporte marítimo de curta distância envolve a gestão de porta-contentores e respetivas cargas que têm de ser entregues dentro de prazos pré-definidos a um conjunto de portos marítimos. O problema é constituído por duas decisões importantes que devem ser tomadas: qual a rota que os navios deverão percorrer e como deverá ser elaborado o plano de carga para cada navio tentando evitar cargas e descargas desnecessárias. Para isso foi desenvolvida uma heurística e apresentam-se os resultados obtidos, comparando-os com a solução ótima obtida pelo modelo matemático desenvolvido em (Moura et al., 2012a). Pretende-se com a heurística desenvolvida obter soluções admissíveis próximas da solução ótima. A solução ótima é calculada recorrendo a um modelo de programação linear inteira que entre outros objetivos minimiza movimentos de cargas e descargas desnecessárias de contentores. A heurística aqui apresentada privilegia a sequência de visita aos portos pelos navios que seja mais curta, considerando restrições de capacidade dos navios e deadlines dos contentores. Para validação da heurística, esta foi testada com problemas baseados em dados reais e apresentados por (Moura et al., 2012a).This work aims to develop a heuristic to resolve the Container Stowage and Ship Routing Problem (CSSRP). The short sea shipping involves the management of container vessels and respective cargo with delivered date predefined to a set of seaports. The problem consists of two important decisions that must be made: which route the ships should take and how the cargo plan should be prepared for each ship to avoid unnecessary loads and unloads of containers. For that was developed an heuristic and the results obtained were compared with the optimal solution obtained by the mathematical model developed by Moura et al. (Moura et al., 2012a) . The intention of the heuristics developed is to obtain admissible solutions near the optimal solution. The optimal solution is calculated using a mixed integer programming model that among other objectives minimizes the movements of unnecessary loading and unloading of containers. The heuristic here presented favours the shorter sequence of ports visit by vessels, considering capacity constraints of ships and containers deadlines. To validate the heurist, that was tested with problems based on real data and presented at (Moura et al., 2012a)

Immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm for multi-objective optimization in global container repositioning

The development of evolutionary algorithms for optimization has always been a stimulating and growing research area with an increasing demand in using them to solve complex industrial optimization problems. A novel immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm known as Hybrid Artificial Immune Systems (HAIS) for solving both unconstrained and constrained multi-objective optimization problems is developed in this research. The algorithm adopts the clonal selection and immune suppression theories, with a sorting scheme featuring uniform crossover, multi-point mutation, non-dominance and crowding distance sorting to attain the Pareto optimal front in an efficient manner. The proposed algorithm was verified with nine benchmarking functions on its global optimal search ability as well as compared with four optimization algorithms to assess its diversity and spread. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to investigate the selection of key parameters of the algorithm. It is found that the developed immunity-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm provides a useful means for solving optimization problems and has successfully applied to the problem of global repositioning of containers, which is one of a constrained multi-objective optimization problem. The developed HAIS will assist shipping liners on timely decision making and planning of container repositioning operations in global container transportation business in an optimized and cost effective manner. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.link_to_subscribed_fulltex