EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

1853. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best: Robust design of an efficient and fair liner alliance

Invited abstract in session WC-32: Green maritime and port logistics-2, stream Maritime and Port Logistics.

Wednesday, 12:30-14:00
Room: Maurice Keyworth 1.09

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Yadong Wang
School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology
2. Huming Zhang
School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology

Abstract

As competition in shipping market intensifies, liner shipping companies are increasingly forming alliances to boost profitability in tough market environment through resources sharing among partners. However, it is important to ensure fairness among alliance members, which is critical to maintaining a stable and productive collaboration. Moreover, the international shipping market is highly dynamic with fluctuating container shipment demand, adding complexity to the organization of liner shipping services within alliances. In this regard, this paper proposes a unified optimization framework that covers both fairness considerations and uncertain shipment demand for efficient fleet co-deployment and slot co-management in liner alliances. To maximize the alliance profit, a general deterministic model is first developed to characterize our optimization framework with deterministic demand. Subsequently, the deterministic model is extended to a two-stage robust optimization model with uncertain demand to maximize the alliance worst-case profit. The first stage involves fleet deployment decisions while the second stage addresses slot co-management decisions made after the uncertain demand is realized. A customized C&CG algorithm is applied to solve the model. To validate the efficiency of the algorithm and the effectiveness of the proposed model, a series of numerical experiments are conducted, and several strategic insights are provided to guide decision-making for liner alliances.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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