TY - JOUR

T1 - Liner shipping network design with sensitive demand

AU - Cheaitou, Ali

AU - Hamdan, Sadeque

AU - Larbi, Rim

PY - 2021/9/6

Y1 - 2021/9/6

N2 - PurposeThis paper aims to examine containership routing and speed optimization for maritime liner services. It focuses on a realistic case in which the transport demand, and consequently the collected revenue from the visited ports depend on the sailing speed.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present an integer non-linear programming model for the containership routing and fleet sizing problem, in which the sailing speed of every leg, the ports to be included in the service and their sequence are optimized based on the net line's profit. The authors present a heuristic approach that is based on speed discretization and a genetic algorithm to solve the problem for large size instances. They present an application on a line provided by COSCO in 2017 between Asia and Europe.FindingsThe numerical results show that the proposed heuristic approach provides good quality solutions after a reasonable computation time. In addition, the demand sensitivity has a great impact on the selected route and therefore the profit function. Moreover, the more the demand is sensitive to the sailing speed, the higher the sailing speed value.Research limitations/implicationsThe vessel carrying capacity is not considered in an explicit way.Originality/valueThis paper focuses on an important aspect in liner shipping, i.e. demand sensitivity to sailing speed. It brings a novel approach that is important in a context in which sailing speed strategies and market volatility are to be considered together in network design. This perspective has not been addressed previously.

AB - PurposeThis paper aims to examine containership routing and speed optimization for maritime liner services. It focuses on a realistic case in which the transport demand, and consequently the collected revenue from the visited ports depend on the sailing speed.Design/methodology/approachThe authors present an integer non-linear programming model for the containership routing and fleet sizing problem, in which the sailing speed of every leg, the ports to be included in the service and their sequence are optimized based on the net line's profit. The authors present a heuristic approach that is based on speed discretization and a genetic algorithm to solve the problem for large size instances. They present an application on a line provided by COSCO in 2017 between Asia and Europe.FindingsThe numerical results show that the proposed heuristic approach provides good quality solutions after a reasonable computation time. In addition, the demand sensitivity has a great impact on the selected route and therefore the profit function. Moreover, the more the demand is sensitive to the sailing speed, the higher the sailing speed value.Research limitations/implicationsThe vessel carrying capacity is not considered in an explicit way.Originality/valueThis paper focuses on an important aspect in liner shipping, i.e. demand sensitivity to sailing speed. It brings a novel approach that is important in a context in which sailing speed strategies and market volatility are to be considered together in network design. This perspective has not been addressed previously.

U2 - 10.1108/MABR-10-2019-0045

DO - 10.1108/MABR-10-2019-0045

M3 - Article

VL - 6

SP - 293

EP - 313

JO - Maritime Business Review

JF - Maritime Business Review

IS - 3

ER -