Mathematical Approach for Fleet Planning Under Complicated Circumstances

In order to facilitate the scientific management of large-sized shipping companies, fleet planning under complicated circumstances has been studied. Based on multiple influencing factors such as the techno-economic status of ships, the investment capacity of company, the possible purchase of new ships, the buying/selling of second-hand vessels and the chartering/renting of ships, a mixed-integer programming model for fleet planning has been established. A large-sized shipping company is utilized to make an empirical study, and Benders decom- position algorithm is employed to test the applicability of the proposed model. The result shows that the model is capable for multi-route, multi-ship and large-scaled fleet planning and thus helpful to support the decision making of large-sized shipping companies.