An Optimization Method Study For Circus Container Line

This paper addresses the design of container liner shipping service networks by considering type of the chosen container ship, the size of the fleet, the distribution of full containers at each port, arrival density, empty container repositioning, etc. In this paper, the problem is formulated in a 3-STAGES form, in which first two stages deal with optimizing the shipping line and the last one considers the operation of the container shipping process. Of course, as they are not isolated, these three stages are formatted in a four-fold composite model to optimize every issue by engaging maximum earnings of each vessel with the balance operation principle. In essence, the problem mainly consists of the issue of shipping line design (TSP), the issue of berthing port selection (KP) and the issue of loading or unloading full and empty containers plan at each port (LP). By a special effective way of genetic representation developed, a genetic algorithm-based heuristic is developed for the problem with a view to find an ideal solution for the problem. Through a number of numerical experiments that were conducted it was shown that the problem with the consideration of those issues provides a more insightful solution than the one without.