새로운 허브 포트를 고려한 정기선의 최적항로결정모형 개발에 관한 연구

Abstract

In the liner shipping industry a shipowner runs a regular service stopping at a certain set of fixed ports of call and usually on a fixed time schedule. Once a route has been determined for a ship, it usually lasts for a long time. This makes the routing problem for a liner shipping company strategic and challenging which affects a long period of time. Especially, for bigger containerships usually over 4000TEU, routing strategy is one of the essential elements that can determine a company's competitive power.

Larger containerships sail only between bigger ports so called hub ports, and the cargos discharged at hub ports are distributed and transshipped to smaller ports called feeder ports. In light of this, the hub ports and feeder ports should be studied on together, and the design and usage of the network of hub and feeder ports requires an integrated and systematic decision making model.

In more generic terms, the hub and spoke network system has already been applied to many transportation and communication industries, and proven to be helpful to solve complicated routing problems. In spite of this encouraging results, few academic research have been yet tried exploiting this hub and spoke network in shipping industries. This thesis applies the hub and spoke network system and provides an optimal route planning model for a containership. This model can be used to develop an optimal route for a containership, where the shipping company faces a new opportunity of stopping at new candidate hub ports that have potential economic merit but have not yet been included in the company's liner routes.