Maritime Transportation Planning Support System for a Car Shipping Company

Park, Byung-Joo; Choi, Hyung-Rim; Kim, Hyun-Soo; Jung, Jae-Un

Journal of Navigation and Port Research 2008;32(4):295-304.
Published online June 20, 2008.

Maritime Transportation Planning Support System for a Car Shipping Company

Byung-Joo Park, Hyung-Rim Choi, Hyun-Soo Kim, Jae-Un Jung

Abstract

In order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the expanding maritime transportation market, most shipping companies are making every effort to reduce transportation costs. Likewise, the car shipping companies, which carry more than 80% of total car import and export logistics volume, also do their utmost for transportation cost saving. Until now many researches have been made for efficient maritime transportation, but studies for car shipping companies have rarely been made. For this reason, this study has tried to develop a maritime transportation planning support system which can help to save logistics costs and increase a competitive power of car shipping companies. To this end, instead of manual effort to solve the routing problem of car carrier vessels, this study has used an integer programming model to make an optimal transportation planning at the minimum cost. Also in response to the frequent changes both in the car production schedule and ship's arrival schedule after the completion of transportation planning, this research has developed a decision support system of maritime transportation, so that users can easily modify their existing plans.

Key Words: Car shipping company;Optimal transportation planning;Routing problem;Integer programming;Decision support system