This paper examines the statistical properties and the quality of the speed through water (STW) measurement based on data extracted from almost 200 container ships of Maersk Line’s fleet for 3 years of operation. The analysis uses high-frequency sensor data along with additional data sources derived from external providers. The interest of the study has its background in the accuracy of STW measurement as the most important parameter in the assessment of a ship’s performance analysis. The paper contains a thorough analysis of the measurements assumed to be related with the STW error, along with a descriptive decomposition of the main variables by sea region including sea state, vessel class, vessel IMO number and manufacturer of the speed-log installed in each ship. The paper suggests a semi-empirical method using a threshold to identify potential error in a ship’s STW measurement. The study revealed that the sea region is the most influential factor for the STW accuracy and that 26% of the ships of the dataset’s fleet warrant further investigation.
Green shipping as an emerging concept which aims to mitigate the negative environmental impacts caused by shipping activities has received more and more attentions recently. However, there is a gap in knowledge how to take the efficacious measures, which makes it difficult for the stakeholders of shipping activities to promote green shipping. In order to fill this gap, this chapter proposed a generic methodology for establishing a criterion evaluation system for greenness assessment of shipping, including the identification of the success factors, the development of some strategic measures, and the analysis of the measures for enhancing the greenness of shipping. A criterion evaluation system which consists of multiple criteria in five aspects including: technological aspect, economic aspect, environmental aspect, social aspect, and managerial aspect has been firstly established. Subsequently, Analytic Network Process (ANP) has been employed to determine the relative importance of these factors in green shipping with the consideration of the interdependences and interactions among these criteria for evaluating the greenness of shipping, and they have been ranked from the most important to the least. Accordingly, the key success factors for green shipping have been obtained. Then, some strategic measures for helping the stakeholders enhance the greenness of shipping have been proposed. Finally, Interpretative Structuring Modeling (ISM) has been employed to analyze the cause-effect relationships among these measures and the features of these measures.
Global warming and, correspondingly, reducing CO2 emissions is one of the most challenging tasks the world faces today. The maritime industry contributed to 2.89% of the global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. To decrease this share, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) defined, among others, the goal to reduce the carbon intensity of international shipping by 40% until 2030. In this context, the short-term measures recently adopted, in the form of a technical standard (Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index, EEXI) and a rating scheme based on an operational indicator (Carbon Intensity Indicator, CII), mark a crucial step to achieving the mentioned goal. In addition, the EU Commission has recently introduced the FuelEU Maritime Initiative limiting the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of a ship’s energy use incorporating a reduction occurring in a five-year rhythm between 2025 and 2050. The paper investigates the practical options availed to existing containerships of different sizes and technological vintages for meeting the specific EEXI, CII, and GHG intensity reduction requirements imposed by the regulations. The investigation will be based on the actual technical and operational profiles of six sample ships and will consider a set of possible compliance options including, but not limited to, engine power limitation, waste heat recovery system, variable frequency drives, and virtual arrival. The data used originates from noon reports of existing containerships provided by a European industry leader. The ship-specific CO2 emission reduction potentials required for the impact assessment result from either literature or actual data-based calculations. Financial data is used for investigating the economic impact of the reduction requirements. Conclusions drawn include an operational advantage that pre-EEDI ships enjoy when applying engine power limitation (EPL) for EEXI compliance, the occurrence of payback periods exceeding ship lifetimes, and an estimate of the effect that onshore power supply can have on complying with the FuelEU Maritime Initiative.
Most of the operational problems in container terminals are strongly interconnected. In this paper, we study the integrated Berth Allocation and Quay Crane Assignment Problem in seaport container terminals. We will extend the current state-of-the-art by proposing novel set partitioning models. To improve the performance of the set partitioning formulations, a number of variable reduction techniques are proposed. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of different discretization schemes and the impact of using a time-variant/invariant quay crane allocation policy. Computational experiments show that the proposed models significantly improve the benchmark solutions of the current state-of-art optimal approaches.
In global liner shipping networks, a large share of transported cargo is transshipped at least once between container vessels, and the total transportation time of these containers depends on how well the corresponding services are synchronized. We propose a problem formulation that integrates service scheduling into the liner shipping network design problem. Furthermore, the model incorporates many industry-relevant modeling aspects: it allows for leg-based sailing speed optimization, it is not limited to simple or butterfly-type services, and it accounts for service-level requirements such as cargo transit time limits. The classic liner shipping network design problem is already a hard problem, and to solve the extended version, we propose a column-generation matheuristic that uses advanced linear programming techniques. The proposed method solves LINER-LIB instances of up to 114 ports and, if applied to the classic liner shipping network design problem, finds new best solutions to all instances, outperforming existing methods reported in the literature. Additionally, we analyze the relevance of scheduling for liner shipping network design. The results indicate that neglecting scheduling and approximating transshipments instead may result in the design of liner shipping networks that underestimate cargo transit times and their implications.
The objective of this article is to provide a review of literature dealing with empty container repositioning. This review is interlinked with a qualitative data analysis based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of ocean carriers, which are key actors determining empty container repositioning. Empirical evidence obtained from fieldwork in the Czech Republic, albeit limited, is used to illustrate empty repositioning management by ocean carriers in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) landlocked hinterlands, which have been neglected in research with a specific geographic scope. By addressing the research questions and conducting the analysis, the authors determine whether empty container repositioning is a problem only concerning equipment allocation by an ocean carrier or requires a collaborative resolution involving various parties engaged in container movements in landlocked hinterlands. This article confirms that most existing literature dealing with empty container repositioning ignores the actual dynamics of landlocked hinterlands as well as business practitioners' perspective. The authors' analysis of the empirical research complements and challenges the reviewed research studies. Based on the analysis, ocean carriers seem to be unwilling to revise their actual container management strategies focused on maritime repositioning, disregarding the potential and importance of intermodal repositioning approaches based on market collaboration. Regarding further research directions, the authors suggest the research replicability and its extension.
Container shipping is generally considered a global business. This truth may not hold from a single-company perspective. The companies’ physical operation networks show that container carriers operate differently and follow different paths in their internationalisation development. Additionally, the degree of internationalisation, measured on the basis of sea-oriented operations, differs from that measured according to land-oriented front-end marketing and sales activities. The purpose of this study is to further examine the internationalisation patterns of shipping lines. An examination of the front-end activities and the structures of leading container-shipping companies is conducted. The sales office networks of the sector’s 20 largest companies worldwide (by twenty-foot equivalent unit capacity) are analysed as key indicators. The numbers of sales offices are measured by analysing the websites of the sample (20 companies), as well as annual reports and other publicly available data sources. The findings show that not all shipping companies are international, by virtue of the industry. While it is difficult to observe differences in the overall patterns of the sales networks at a macro level, some companies differ in their activities. The data set also shows that market share and total capacity are not necessarily good indicators of a carrier’s worldwide presence. This research is based on secondary data. Other important transactional and market-oriented considerations should be examined before drawing conclusions about the internationalisation of container-shipping companies and of the industry. This paper contributes to the relevant existing research, particularly by adding its view on the demand-oriented criteria as suggested by Dunning and Lundan (2008).
The maritime industry is one of the greenest modes of transportation, taking care of almost 90% of the global trade. The maritime container business revolves around liner shipping, which consists of container vessels sailing on fixed itineraries. For the last 20 years, there has been an increasing number of publications regarding how to design such fixed routes (services), to ensure a high level of service while minimizing operational costs and environmental impact. The liner shipping network design problem can briefly be described as follows: Given a set of demands (defined by origin, destination, time limit) and a set of vessels with variable capacity, the task is to design a set of weekly services, assign vessels to the services, and flow the demand through the resulting network such that it arrives within the stated time constraints. The objective is to maximize revenue of transported demand subtracting the operational costs. We present an in-depth literature overview of existing models and solution methods for liner shipping network design, and discuss the four main families of solution methods: integrated mixed integer programming models; two-stage algorithms designing services in the first step and flowing containers in the second step; two-stage algorithms first flowing containers and then designing services; and finally algorithms for selecting a subset of proposed candidate services. We end the presentation by comparing the performance of leading algorithms using the public LINER-LIB instances. The paper is concluded by discussing future trends in liner shipping, indicating directions for future research.
Container shipping drives the global economy and is an eco-friendly mode of transportation. A key objective is to maximize the utilization of vessels, which is challenging due to the NP-hardness of stowage planning. This article surveys the literature on the Container Stowage Planning Problem (CSPP). We introduce a classification scheme to analyze single-port and multi-port CSPPs, as well as the hierarchical decomposition of CSPPs into the master and slot planning problem. Our survey shows that the area has a relatively small number of publications and that it is hard to evaluate the industrial applicability of many of the proposed solution methods due to the oversimplification of problem formulations. To address this issue, we propose a research agenda with directions for future work, including establishing a representative problem definition and providing new benchmark instances where needed.
Having the right spare part at the right time to the right place for ship maintenance to the minimal possible costs is an exigent management problem that maritime shipping companies face. This is especially challenging in bulk shipping where routes are not fixed, but subsequent port calls depend on spot market dynamics. Thus, spare parts allocation ahead in time is limited, but possible if failures rates of ship components and their timing can be foreseen, so that spare parts can be allocated to hedge against the risk of long waiting times and thus ship downtimes. Thus, monitoring the condition of components key to the ships performance is essential to the task. This can enable companies to significantly reduce operational costs of their fleet leading to a competitive advantage in a highly volatile market regarding demand and demand-driven freight rates.
However, shipping companies seem far away from applying such methods due to various challenges ranging from data gathering and cultivating an understanding of data quality needs, adaptation to move from preventive towards predictive and condition-based monitoring, and the introduction and application of decision support tools for sourcing, spare parts allocation, and inventory management.
In this paper, we investigate the current state of the art of maintenance and related spare parts logistics management for maritime shipping and discuss the application of methods to the bulk carriage market. We add practical knowledge from case companies and discuss how challenges can be overcome in providing guidelines for companies.