Shipping companies operating liner services keep facing a high level of competition because of the increasing demand for these operators to provide fast, efficient, effective and reliable service. It is challenging fo...Shipping companies operating liner services keep facing a high level of competition because of the increasing demand for these operators to provide fast, efficient, effective and reliable service. It is challenging for these liner operators to offer such services and still be competitive without strategic planning. It, therefore, makes planning and scheduling of shipping routes essential for the smooth operation of liner ships, especially shipping lines operating heterogeneously mixed size fleets. This paper aims to solve a heterogeneously mixed size fleet problem by using an operation research method with the implementation of linear programming to develop optimal shipping routes for a fleet of five vessels serving six coastal ports to get optimal results. An optimal solution to the problem is found with only two routes selected as the optimal shipping routes out of four routes that are considered. The results also showed that a vessel can be assigned to multiple shipping routes.展开更多
文摘Shipping companies operating liner services keep facing a high level of competition because of the increasing demand for these operators to provide fast, efficient, effective and reliable service. It is challenging for these liner operators to offer such services and still be competitive without strategic planning. It, therefore, makes planning and scheduling of shipping routes essential for the smooth operation of liner ships, especially shipping lines operating heterogeneously mixed size fleets. This paper aims to solve a heterogeneously mixed size fleet problem by using an operation research method with the implementation of linear programming to develop optimal shipping routes for a fleet of five vessels serving six coastal ports to get optimal results. An optimal solution to the problem is found with only two routes selected as the optimal shipping routes out of four routes that are considered. The results also showed that a vessel can be assigned to multiple shipping routes.