| Freight demand,fleet construction and ship operation management significantly affect the revenue of shipping companies.Freight demand determines the operating income of the shipping company,and which is also the foundation of shipping companies' operation and development.Fleet construction determines shipping companies' capacity and its market competitiveness,which is the core of the shipping companies' operation.Reasonable fleet size and structure are not only a guarantee of high-quality transportation tasks,but also a source of market reputation and market competitiveness.Scientific vessel scheduling management could maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of single-ship operation.In the dry bulk shipping market,especially during the downturn,the shipper has the absolute right to negotiation.As a result,shippers' decision largely determines the freight demand of the shipping companies.First of all,due to the large number of shipping companies in dry bulk shipping market,shippers will evaluate shipping companies from a long-term perspective when choosing the carrier,including evaluating received services and the changes of market competitiveness of shippers after receiving services.In order to ensure the stability of service quality,sometimes shippers will corporate with a shipping company and establish a "shipper-type" shipping subsidiary jointly.In this case,it is necessary to study the operating strategy of shippers and"shipper-type"shipping subsidiary based on this vertical integration mode.Secondly,the service supply of shipping market depends on the shipping companies' fleet construction.Breaking old ships during market downturn,and ordering new ships is the core content of the shipping companies'fleet construction.How to update the fleet scientifically and reasonably during the market downturn so that making shipping companies have a fleet with a moderate size,a reasonable structure and advanced technical indicators in the future boom period is a hot topic in the academic and industry circles.Thirdly,shipping schedule management is a daily business of the shipping company in the spot market,including voyage arrangement of each ship during a certain operation period(such as:6 months or 1 year)and cargo transportation scheme of each ship,and their decision determines the operating income of single vessel of shipping company.In an era of advanced information and computer technology,it is necessary to implement dynamic vessel scheduling management based on demand variation.Under the above context,this paper firstly studies the vertical integration between large dry bulk cargo shippers and large state-owned shipping companies,as well as the operation strategy of shippers and "shipper-type" shipping companies under vertical integration mode.The content of this research includes:1)Analyzing the purpose,behavior,meaning and integration method of vertical' integration between carrier and shipper,building basic game model for carrier and shipper,studying the cooperative game between carrier and shipper from the carrier's income,the owner's income and the social welfare,and discuss the boundary conditions for the two sides to reach vertical integration contract and jointly invest to establish joint fleet(i.e.the shipping company of shipper);2)Studying the operation strategy of"shipper-type" shipping company,that is,what kind of operating strategy should the"shipper-type”shipping company carry out on daily business,and the impact of this strategy on carrier,the shippers' revenue,and the market competitiveness.Specifically,it includes two kinds of situations:1)the "shipper-type" shipping company is responsible for all parts of cargo transportation of shipper,or only responsible for a part of cargo transportation;2)the"shipper-type" shipping company only carries the cargo belong to its own shippers,or at the same time carries the cargo of other shippers.In addition,under the context that our government launches subsidy policy about breaking old bulk ships in advance during a market downturn,we studied the problem of the updating and optimization of shipping companies' dry bulk fleet(i.e.fleet construction)and analyzed the impact of income from shipbreaking subsidy on shipping companies' fleet construction and its market competitiveness.This part includes two contents:one is to analyze the content and applicability of shipbreaking subsidy policy,as well as the ship breaking method and the benefits of shipping company from shipbreaking,which the purpose is to add variables and constraints to capture those factors in the ship fleet update optimization model;The other is to establish a planning model for the shipping companies' dry bulk shipping fleet in the case of shipbreaking subsidy.Here,based on the ARMA model,a method for predicting multi-period freight demand in the dry bulk shipping market is proposed,and the prediction result is taken as the parameter of the optimization model.In order to verify model validity and provide necessary suggestions of decision-making on ship fleet construction of Chinese shipping companies,this paper takes a large dry bulk shipping company as an example to solve the fleet planning model and then obtain the scheme about shipbreaking and ship updating in advance.By comparing and analyzing the shipping companies' fleet updating plan and the changes in operating profit when there is no shipbreaking subsidy income,we can reveal the impact of the shipbreaking subsidy policy on the updating of shipping companies' dry bulk fleet.Finally,based on the spatiotemporal characteristics of shippers' choice behavior and freight demand,the operation management of dry bulk fleet ship is studied and the vessel operation scheduling scheme is optimized.In this part,considering shippers' choice inertia and the spatiotemporal change of freight demand,we break down a long operating period(for example,1 year)into multiple consecutive operating time windows and build a scheduling optimization model for irregular fleets aiming to maximize the profit of shipping companies.In this model,we firstly use long-term market share of shipping companies measure the shippers' choice inertia;secondly,the discrete choice model is used to calculate the market share of shipping companies in the spot market;thirdly,the seasonal variation of dry bulk transportation demand is analyzed on the timeline,the time window is used to describe the distribution characteristics of dry bulk cargo transportation on the time axis,and the two-dimensional flow imbalance is used to describe the spatial fluctuation characteristics of dry bulk cargo transportation.To verify the validity of the model,a shipping company operating a Pacific route is used as an example for numerical analysis.The results show that in order to avoid the opportunity cost loss in the subsequent time window and maximize the overall profit during the operation period,sometimes the shipping company will allow the ship to execute the no-load voyage in the current time window.The ship scheduling optimization model can effectively optimize dry bulk shipping operation plan of shipping company,which is beneficial to the shipping company to obtain higher operating profit for a long time. |
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