最後，並輔以油價及運價的敏感度分析，以求得在高度競爭的航運市場中之船隊部署與調度之參考，強化競爭優勢。結果發現油價變化對於船隊部署影響較小，航線運價影響較大。 ;Liner Shipping mainly carries containerized cargo like products or semi-products by containerships. The more cargos a containership can carry on, the more income it can contribute to the operators. Therefore, liner operators tend to construct and/or lease bigger containerships with state-of-the-art technology. As a result, a typical liner operator has to deploy different sizes of fleet as acquired at different times.
With different sizes of fleet to be deployed into different routes, how to allocate the containerships to optimize profit becoming a critical issue for liner operators. On the other hand, the ocean freight is determined by the supply and demand of the market. Fluctuations of demand can substantially affect liner operators’ profits. Currently, fleet deployment mainly relies on the personal experience of a handful planners.
To facilitate the fleet deployment, this Research proposed a decision model utilizing the technique of integer programming. The model is being applied to simulation data derived from a well-known Taiwanese liner operator. Four main service routes (Europe/Mediterranean/ United States East Coast and West Coast), and a total of its 63 large-to-medium sized ships are deployed with the proposed model. The experiment shows that the fleet deployment suggested by the model can earned extra USD 1,478,567 than the fleet deployment suggested by planner’s human design in the 3rd quarter of 2019.
Last but not least, sensitivity analysis on fuel prices and ocean freight is also conducted to verify the robustness of the proposed model. The result showed that freight fluctuation has greater impacts on the fleet deployment than floating on fuel price.
