Container Shipping Trunk Route Schedule Planning And Design

The trade competition between container carriers has became increasingly intense to be followed by an upsurge in the service quality and an drops of the carrying costs by container corporations. The planning and programming of the shipping routes, which is the basic elements of the large-scale production and interconnected management, is the key points to develop the service and reduce costs.The economic globalization speeds up in 90s 20 century when the transnational corporations have been blooming along with the rapidly increasing international trade, as a result, the needs of the ocean transportation grows with each passing day. The container transports which are safety, high loading capacity and low costs has been the first choices of the global traders. According to the statistics, the development of the outputs in China and that in the world has been steady increased by 30% and 10%each year from 1990 to 1999. In the year 2001, the number of container vessels in the world reached 2700 totaling over 4,700,000 TEU.Exceeding the expectations of the people, the growth rate of the world economy had slowed down especially after that of the Asian financial crisis. In addition, the supply of the container transportation capacity exceeded demand, and that proclaimed the white-hot competition age between the shipping companies has arrived.To improve the operation ability of the shipping routes, to optimize the sales structure, to raise the service reliability and quality, and to reduce the operation costs would be the main research points to the shipping corporations and its research centers. From the angle of economy and marketing, most company director believes that the container transportation has to be interconnected, systematized, informationized and forming a large scale. In results, a momentum of annexation and reorganized of enterprises surged forward and ultra large container carriers have been produced.The enlargement of corporation scale and the increase in container turnover of the single vessels do reduce the operation costs, yet the situation of supply exceeding demands has getting worse. That makes people recognize that the expansion of the shipping capacity, to some extent, no longer profitable. To operate a excellent shipping service and run a beneficial management could win more. For this aspect, the essay focus on the planning and programming of the main-haul trading routes. As one of the distinguished feature of container carriers, the operation of shipping lines has strictly act accordance with the schedule for voyages. The schedule reliability has become the important judges to its comprehensive strength and service standard. Further more, some prestigious shipping magazines from U.S., Britain, Australia and China held the award to the best reliability annually, of which the symbol to a shipping routes bond.The shipping service routes has been influenced by the social economics, politics and natural environments accordance with the management and shipping capacity of the company own. The loose rotations could ensure the reliability but involves more vessels, takes more time and connected ports. The tight rotation could be more profitable but make much more difficulties on reliability.In brief, the research to the planning and programming shipping rotations has great significance to practice.