Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A Model for the Coordination of 20-foot
and 40-foot Container Movements
in the Hinterland of a Container Terminal
Jörn Schönberger, Tobias Buer, and Herbert Kopfer
Chair of Logistics, University of Bremen,
Wilhelm-Herbst-Str. 5, 28359 Bremen, Germany
{jsb,tobias.buer,kopfer}@uni-bremen.de
Abstract.
Considered is a carrier that requires decision support to or-
ganize an ecient transport of loaded and empty containers in the hinter-
land of a sea port. Loaded containers are handled as pickup-and-delivery
requests, however, requests for empty containers are incomplete because
either the pickup location of a container or the delivery location of a
container is a priori unknown. The problem is modelled as a generaliza-
tion of the pickup-and-delivery problem (PDP) with less-than-truckload
(LTL) requests. Practically speaking, by using LTL request we are able
to consider 20-foot and 40-foot containers simultaneously. This is closer
to reality than most previous models discussed in the literature which
use full truckload requests, i.e., only containers of homogeneous size are
possible. Three types of decisions are involved in the proposed model: a
determination of pickup or delivery locations for the incomplete requests,
a routing of vehicles, and a routing of empty containers. The presented
model is validated by means of a numerical example computed by a MIP
solver.
Keywords:
hinterland
container
transport,
container
and
request
matching, incomplete requests, pickup-and-delivery.
1
Introduction
Drayage operations involve the transport of containers between a container ter-
minal (sea port or railway yard) and some customer locations in the hinterland
of the terminal. Here, the focus is on road-based transport of the containers by
means of trucks. The transport requests in drayage operations include move-
ments of loaded as well as empty containers. Usually, containers are transported
from customers to terminals or vice versa. The requests are initiated and specified
by the customers. Drayage operations are of high importance for the design of
ecient intermodal container trac, because they account for about 40 percent
of the total transport costs.
We consider daily drayage operations from the point of view of a trucking com-
pany (decision maker) which is responsible to organize the container movements.
