A bi-objective programming model for loading finished-vehicles in containers with adjustable brackets

ABSTRACT

The containerized transportation mode has attracted more attention from many finished-vehicle (FV) logistics companies and ocean carriers which can provide door-to-door service and organize the multi-model transportation. This paper considers the FV loading problem for a carrier who uses containerized transportation mode. To increase the loading factor of containers and guarantee the safety of vehicles from damage, an adjustable bracket is introduced to place two-layer vehicles by tilting the upper pallet. A bi-objective programming problem is proposed in the sense of maximizing the safety margins of vehicles by setting the configuration of an adjustable bracket and the locations of the vehicles on the pallets. For any given combination of two vehicle types, we proved that the Pareto frontier of the bi-objective programming problem is a line and the Pareto optimal slope of the upper pallet can be determined by a maximization problem. With the Pareto frontier, the general FV loading problem with multiple vehicle types can be modeled as an integer programming problem and calculated by traditional programming algorithms. Areal loading task for the COSCO was adopted to depict our model and method.

KEYWORDS:

• Finished-vehicle loading
• containerized transportation
• adjustable brackets
• bi-objective programming

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (71871037 and 71831002).