貨櫃排程問題乃針對每一起迄對之貨櫃搜尋運送路線,以期總營運成本最低,由於該問題與航商營運上許多不同層次之分析均有關連,因此,其為航商之重要課題之一。然當貨物排程問題隨營運網路擴大而複雜化,航商將難再以經驗法則作一有效處理,實有必要發展一套分析工具來協助分析。 本研究將針對航商貨櫃排程問題特性構建一數學規劃模式,在總營運成本極小化之前提下,決定貨櫃在營運網路中之運送路線。由於問題中每一貨櫃起迄對可視為一單元商品(commodity),故該問題屬一多元商品流量問題(multicommodity flow problem),複其需考量船舶之容量,故所構建之貨櫃排程模式,本質上為一容量限制性多元商品流量問題。此外,為測試模式之適用性,本研究以國內某大航商遠東與美西航線之貨櫃排程問題為例進行實例研究。所獲致之運算結果除可了解各起迄對貨櫃之運送路線,以作營運部門運送貨櫃之依據外,並可就擁擠航段進行敏感性分析,以作為航商企劃部門調整航段艙位容量之參考。
In order to offer better service and maintain competitiveness, most major shipping carriers have ”networklized” their containership routes, and this is the main cause of the container routing problem. This container routing problem is to determine optimal paths for each set of containers with the same origin and destination (O-D), under the available capacities offered by containership routes and at the minimum overall costs. An optimization model is formulated for this container routing problem for shipping carriers. Essentially, this model is a multicommodity network flow problem. Promising test results from this model are obtained, which have shown the model c feasibility. We hope that this model can be applied in the real world industry and serve as a helpful tool for shipping carriers in solving their container routing problem.