Proposed models for empty container management

Abstract

A large number of mathematical models have been proposed in management of containers with emphasis on empty containers and their repositioning. The paper discusses the existing methods and their limitations and proposes two methods viz. Transshipment method and Dynamic Programming (DP) method. The former assumes that costs of movement of containers from any node to other nodes are known or estimated and tries to minimize total transportation cost. The latter one consists of a collection of equations that describe a sequential decision process. An optimal solution of DP has the property that whatever initial state and decisions are, the remaining decisions must constitute an optimal policy with regard to the state resulting from the first decision. Both the proposed methods appear to be simple and are likely to improve decision-makings at the level of local operators.