Optimization Of Container Shipping Network In South East Asia Region

Shipping is a service industry that by general acknowledgement provides the lifeline of international trade. Suffice it to say that, due to the morphology of our planet,90%of international trade takes place by sea. Technological developments in ship design and construction, and the ensuing economies of scale of larger ships, have also promoted trade-particularly that of developing nations-by making economical the transportation of goods over long distances. This has expanded markets for raw materials and final products and has facilitated the industrialization of many countries around the world.Nowadays, South East Asiais a region known by quick developing countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and a region of busy sea transportation from East to West. Locating in the area, beside the two gigantic economies, China and India, local sea ports attract more and more transferred cargoes from all over the world. In fact, for years, Singapore port is well known as not only a first class deep water port but also an admirable logistics centre. The sea shipping market here, therefore, becomes extremely profitable and play an important role in the region’s developing trend.The case study aim to optimize the container shipping network in the South East Asia region by minimizing the transport cost among set of ports in this area. This aim can be achieved by firstly, modeling the container shipping network which is constructed by hub ports and feeder ports as nodes and trunk lines and feeder lines as links. Secondly, the model will be tested by applying Genetic Algorithm and Matlab with a set of input data.The calculation results should be the optimized network of specified hub ports and feeder ones andthen, such results will be discussed to contribute suggestions for logistics development for ports in the region.