As the oversupply of shipping capacity and the competition within the shipping industry intensifies, liner alliances have emerged as the prevailing mode of cooperation. The members in a liner alliance often have different shipping resources, indicating that they have to coordinate the shipping resources with each other, in order to achieve smooth cooperation. During the coordination, the fairness of members cannot be ignored as it forms the foundation of cooperation stability. Meanwhile, the vessel fleet is often heterogeneous in practice, not homogeneous assumed in most of existing studies. Therefore, this research explores the joint optimization problem of heterogeneous vessel fleet co-management (including fleet co-deployment, vessel co-scheduling, vessel co-sequencing, slot co-chartering and slot co-allocation), taking into account profit-sharing agreement and weekly-dependent demand. In response to this problem, a mixed-integer nonlinear program is first formulated with the goal of maximizing the overall profit reached by the alliance. We then linearize this nonlinear program, and subsequently develop a solution method to identify the optimal solution for the linearized model. Various numerical tests are performed to examine the validity of the proposed model. Furthermore, several managerial insights that support the operation of liner alliance are delivered.

中文翻译：

---

根据利润分享协议和每周需求，为班轮联盟提供异构船队共同管理


随着航运运力供过于求和航运业内部竞争的加剧，班轮联盟已成为主流合作模式。班轮联盟中的成员往往拥有不同的航运资源，说明他们必须相互协调航运资源，才能实现顺利合作。在协调过程中，成员的公平性不容忽视，因为它构成了合作稳定的基础。同时，船队在实践中通常是异质的，而不是大多数现有研究中假设的同质性。因此，本研究探讨了异构船队协同管理（包括船队协同调度、船舶协同调度、船舶协同排序、舱位协同租期和舱位协同分配）的联合优化问题，同时考虑利润分享协议和每周依赖需求。针对这个问题，首先制定了一个混合整数非线性规划，其目标是使联盟达到的整体利润最大化。然后，我们将这个非线性程序线性化，然后开发一种求解方法来确定线性化模型的最佳解。进行了各种数值测试以检验所提模型的有效性。此外，还提供了一些支持 liner alliance 运营的管理见解。