Optimizing Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning Plans

We solve a central problem in the liner shipping industry called the Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning Problem (LSFRP). The LSFRP poses a large financial burden on liner shipping firms. During repositioning, vessels are moved between routes in a liner shipping network. Liner carriers wish to reposition vessels as cheaply as possible without disrupting the cargo flows of the network. We present the latest computational methods for solving the LSFRP and providing decision support to repositioning coordinator. Furthermore, we show results on a real world scenario in which our approach is able to increase the profit earned by our industrial collaborator from $18.1 million to $31.8 million.