Ship Schedule Coordination Considering Horizontal and Vertical Alliance Strategy Under Uncertainty

In order to explore the relationship between the container ship schedule and the revenue of both the port and the shipping company when a horizontal and vertical alliance is formed between the ports and the shipping company, the optimal coordination of the shipping schedule of a certain shipping company's multiple routes through the port of call is investigated with uncertainty in the ship's time in the port. A mixed integer nonlinear programming model of container ship scheduling coordination under the port horizontal and vertical alliance is constructed with the two objectives of maximizing the revenue of shipping companies and ports, and an improved NSGA- algorithm is designed to solve it. Take KMTC's multiple routes connecting with Shanghai Port, Zhoushan Port, and Nantong Port as an example, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the model and algorithm under different circumstances. The results show that compared with the circumstances without considering the inter-port alliance, the revenue of shipping companies under the port horizontal and vertical alliance increases by 6.2%, and the revenue of the port side increases by 25.9%. Shipping companies, planned port, and cooperative ports all benefit from the alliance. Under different routes or arrival and departure times, the model can still obtain a stable shipping schedule. The research shows that the model and algorithm can provide a reference for shipping companies and ports to make reasonable shipping schedules under different circumstances. © 2023 Science Press. All rights reserved.