Container fleet sizing and empty repositioning in liner shipping systems

This paper considers the joint container fleet sizing and empty container repositioning problem in multi-vessel, multi-port and multi-voyage shipping systems with dynamic, uncertain and imbalanced customer demands. The objective is to minimize the expected total costs including inventory-holding costs, lifting-on/lifting-off costs, transportation costs, repositioning costs. and lost-sale penalty costs. A simulation-based optimization tool is developed to optimize the container fleet size and the parameterized empty repositioning policy simultaneously. The optimization procedure is based on Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Strategy combined with an adjustment mechanism. Case studies are given to demonstrate the results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.