On the optimal scheduling problem of the routing programming for container liner ship

This paper addresses the optimization problem of a container liner ship's routing programming and scheduling. Firstly, the mathematical model of the container liner ship's routing programming and scheduling is proposed based on the mode of hub-and-spoke. The mathematical model aims to determine how to divide the set of all candidate ports into the hub port set and spoke port set, how to make the route programming for the liner ship and how to interlink each spoke port to one of the hub port with the objective of maximizing profit of the container liner corporation. The uncertainty of container transferring cost is taken into account and transferring price factor is employed to adjust the transferring cost of transporting containers between one of the hub port and a spoke port in order to meet the need of route programming under the different circumstances. Then the optimization problem of a container liner ship's routing programming and scheduling is verified to be NP-hard problem by analyzing the mathematical model. Nextly the approach based on ant colony optimization and heuristic policies is designed to solve the problem. Finally the simulation results show that the route programming of container liner ship with the hub-and-spoke transporting mode can make the container liner corporation get more profit than with traditional transporting mode.