Three studies on maritime operations management

Abstract

This thesis aims to address three critical issues in maritime operation. In the first study, a main problem of booking container slots in liner shipping is addressed. The shipper book container slots by an estimated demand, which may more or less than the actual demand, causing the mismatch problem and potential risk for carrier. This research proposed a Newsvendor model to address this issue with finding the optimal order quantity of container slots for the shipper. Moreover, this thesis suggests that the shipper should pay the reservation fee to the carrier because the uncertainties of container slots booking made by the shipper might cause revenue loss. Then, the study calculated the maximum profit by the optimal order quantity of the container slots. In the second study, most countries have banned the crew change during COVID-19, leading seafarers' working days extends their contract. This situation causes mental and physical diseases to seafarers. Therefore, opening ports for crew change is a way to solve the problem and is especially important during COVID-19. An integer linear programming (ILP) model is proposed to decide the number of opening ports while considering the cost of opening ports, the cost of crew change and penalty of unchanged crew members. Shipping transportation is mainly powered by heavy fuel oil and thus emits harmful emissions to the environment, such as particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide (CO2), causing negative effect to the environment and human health. IMO encourages shipping companies to use liquid natural gas (LNG) to replace the traditional fuels. LNG is a good source to be used in shipping transportation for its cleanness and easy storage. Bunkering is a necessary process if LNG is used. There are three common methods for LNG bunkering: ship-to-ship, truck-to-ship, and port-to-ship. The objective of this study is to find the optimal bunkering method to build in a port by adopting an integer liner programming (ILP) model and the objective of the ILP model includes three types of costs: fixed cost, variable cost, and extra cost. The results of the case study in this study demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.