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Abstract: The container transportation demand split is one of the most important decision issues for government transportation departments and port organizations. In previous studies, many researchers assumed that the shipping carrier would aim to minimize the total operation cost by selecting an appropriate port as the most favorable one to call, and the shipper would aim to minimize the inland freight cost by selecting the nearest port as the most favorable one to import and export international trade containers. Thus, a number of mathematical programming models have been developed. But in practice, the shipping carrier not only aims to minimize the total operation cost but also takes into account other criteria such as the volume of containers and port facility conditions when choosing an appropriate port as the most favorable one to call. The shipper not only aims to minimize the inland freight cost but also takes into account the frequency of ship callings when choosing an appropriate port as the most favorable one to import and export international trade containers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to formulate a combined fuzzy multiple criteria decision making and optimization programming model for solving the container transportation demand split problem. There are two stages in this combined model: in stage one, we first compute the container transportation demand split rate by using fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method; whereas in stage two, an optimization mathematical programming network model is proposed for determining the inland origin destination (O-D) of import/export containers. The utilization of the proposed model is demonstrated with a case of Taiwanese ports. The results show that the proposed combined fuzzy MCDM and optimization programming model can be used to explain the container transportation demand split practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Containerization transportation has been growing fast in the past few decades. International trades have been growing fast since the globalization of world economies intensified in the early 1990s. However, these international trades are typically imbalanced in terms of the numbers of import and export containers. As a result, the relocation of empty containers has become one of the important problems faced by liner shipping companies. In this paper, we consider the empty container allocation problem where we need to determine the optimal volume of empty containers at a port and to reposition empty containers between ports to meet exporters’ demand over time. We formulate this empty container allocation problem as a two-stage model: in stage one, we propose a fuzzy backorder quantity inventory decision making model for determining the optimal quantity of empty container at a port; whereas in stage two, an optimization mathematical programming network model is proposed for determining the optimal number of empty containers to be allocated between ports. The parameters such as the cost of loading container, cost of unloading container, leasing cost of empty container, cost of storing container, supplies, demands and ship capacities for empty containers are considered in this model. By taking advantages of the fuzzy decision making and the network structure, we show how a mixed fuzzy decision making and optimization programming model can be applied to solve the empty container allocation problem. The utilization of the proposed model is demonstrated with a case of trans-Pacific liner route in the real world. Six major container ports on the trans-Pacific route are considered in the case study, including the Port of Kaohsiung, the Port of Hong Kong, the Port of Keelung, the Port of Kobe, the Port of Yokohama and the Port of Los Angles. The results show that the proposed mixed fuzzy decision making and optimization programming model can be used to solve the empty container allocation problem well. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: “Transshipment” is a very popular and important issue in the present international trade container transportation market. In order to reduce the international trade container transportation operation cost, it is very important for shipping companies to choose the best transshipment container port. The aim of this paper is to present a new Fuzzy Multiple Criteria Decision Making Method (FMCDM) for solving the transshipment container port selection problem under fuzzy environment. In this paper we present first the canonical representation of multiplication operation on three fuzzy numbers, and then this canonical representation is applied to the selection of transshipment container port. Based on the canonical representation, the decision maker of shipping company can determine quickly the ranking order of all candidate transshipment container ports and select easily the best one. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]