Planning inland container shipping: A stochastic assignment problem

Abstract

In this paper a case study is presented concerning the collection and delivery of containers between a container terminal and inland ports by barges making a round trip along these ports. The goal is to maximise the number containers arriving on time, transported by barge. To account for uncertain release times of the containers a simulation algorithm is used when making online decisions whether to assign a container to a barge or not. Using a realistic problem instance it is shown that the proposed simulation algorithm is the better performing one among several other benchmark solution methods.