定期航商單一航線冷凍貨櫃配置之研究

Abstract

航運產業正面臨環境的改變及市場激烈的競爭，油價劇烈的波動使航商的成本難以估計。且船舶不斷地朝大型化發展，造成市場艙位超額供給。面對供給大於需求的困境，航商不斷地以價格做為競爭的武器，而導致利潤下降甚至虧損。冷凍櫃在貨櫃市場中，是價格及獲利較好的櫃種，也是航商改善盈虧重要的關鍵之一。且因全球氣候的改變，讓冷凍櫃的需求大幅增加。但冷凍貨櫃受限於船上插座數、冷櫃空櫃數量…等因素，使每個航次能裝載的冷櫃數量受限。故航商必須利用其有限的空櫃及資源，做最佳的分配，以獲取最大的利益。 以往的研究，往往以追求最大收入，做為主要的目標。但單純考量航線收入，而不考慮起迄點變動成本及空櫃調度成本的影響，無法使航商獲得最大的利潤。因此，本研究以邊際貢獻的概念，改變以往收入為主的考量模式，並納入空櫃不平衡所造成的成本及效益，構建適切的數學規劃模式。並將模式應用於國內航商的亞洲航線上，求解各起迄港之最適冷凍櫃裝載數量。結果顯示本模式可獲得較佳的總邊際貢獻。實務上，航商通常以經驗法則及市場當地預估的需求做為空櫃數量分配之參考，若航商對此高貢獻貨載能輔以數學模式進行分析及分配，對航線盈收應有所助益。

Shipping industry is facing environmental changes and keen market competition. Carriers are also difficult to estimate the cost due to price fluctuation of fuel. To minimize the operating cost, carriers continued to enlarge the capacity of ship, but which have resulted in oversupply of capacity in the liner shipping market. To survive in the competitive market, carriers have to cut down freight to maintain its market share. However, it leads to lower profits or even losses. Among the container business, reefer cargos are more profitable. It is also one of the key points to improve carrier’s performance. Because of global climate getting unstable, the demand of reefer container is substantially increasing and growing. But limited by plug numbers of ship, reefer equipment supply…etc, not many reefer containers could be loaded on each voyage. Thus, carriers must well allocate its limited plugs and resources to obtain the maximum benefit. Most of pervious literatures and academic researches are aimed at pursuing the maximum revenue. But simply consider the revenue, regardless of varying cost and empty reposition cost, cannot make maximum benefit to carriers. Therefore, this study use maximized total marginal contribution instead of maximized total revenue as objective function and developed a mathematical programming model and to applied a case study of a Taiwan container liner to test its efficacy. The results show that the proposed model could provide a better assignment of reefer containers to improve the total marginal contributions.