In maritime transportation of automobiles, roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) shipping companies operate liner shipping services across major trade routes. Large ro-ro shipping companies are well placed to offer end-to-end integrated logistics services to auto manufacturers engaged in international trade of vehicles. Therefore, we present a new mixed integer programming model for fleet deployment including inventory management at the ports along each trade route. Due to the complexity of the problem, a rolling horizon heuristic (RHH) is proposed. The RHH solves the problem by iteratively solving sub-problems with shorter planning horizon. Computational results based on real instances are presented.
Combined fleet deployment and inventory management in roll-on/roll-off shipping
2016
Article (Journal)
English