Decision Support System For Optimal Route Scheduling Problem And Container Ship Stowage Plans

With the rapid development of global economic integration, the international industry ofcontainer liner shipping are maturing, it has become one of important aspects of internationallogistics. In the transportation of liner shipping, the network design of liner ship’s route andcontainer stowage problem are the major field of research.It can be said that the question ofroute and stowage plan play an important role in the improving the overall efficiency of theliner ship companies.This paper focus on the optimization of the liner ship’s route andstowage plan during the transportation by combing with operation research optimizationtheory and computer simulation and as a basis for decision support system,the main contentsas follows:The optimization of liner ship’s route is researched. The study has established an integermodel based on transportation revene with the mode of hub-and-spoke. Taking into accountthe uncertainty of transfer price, the model uses the transfer price factor to adjust the cost oftransportation among ports in order to meet the different circumstances of the optimization ofthe liner ship’s route. The model aims to determine the set of hub ports and the set of thespoke ports for hub-and-spoke route with the objective of maximizing the transport profitsunder the premise of transport task, and finally the model is sloved by the improved ACO.The simulation result shows that relative to the model of the traditional and single transportroute, the liner ship’s route by hub-and-spoke can significantly improves the level of earingsof liner companies.The multi-ports stowage plan of the container ship based on a particular route isresearched. There are two decisive factors in the stowage plan: the vessel′s stability and thenumber of the rehandings. For the liner ship docking a set of ports, these two factors are oftencontradictory. The stowage plan of the liner ship calling in some ports on the entire route isaddressed. Firstly，the math model is proposed by the 0-1 programming method, whichregards the stability of the vessel as a constraint and makes minimizing the number ofrehandings in all calling ports of the vessel on the whole route as the objective. Then animproved Genetic algorithm is designed to solve the stowage problem. The results ofcalculating some simulated data cases show that the method proposed in this paper can getsbetter stowage plannig than the stochastic stowage planning and that according to objectiveports, which are usually used by many container vessels, in transportation safety andeconomical efficiency.For the optimization of liner ship’s route and stowage plan, the study has established thedatabase, model base and method base based on the above route model and container stowagemodel. And finally the initial decision support system is completed. The relationship betweenthe route model and stowage model is a complementary. Specific route is the basis for container stowage plan with the known information of the port, the vessel and containerswhich should be transported. The optimal stowage plan is obtained under a certain route, andthen the system will provide the decision makers with efficient decision information of linership’s route and container stowage plan.