Global synchromodal transportation is a promising strategy for providing efficient, reliable, flexible, and sustainable container shipping services across continents. It involves integrating multiple modes and routes owned by various operators to create a comprehensive transport plan. However, these operators often have their own local networks and are hesitant to cede control to a centralized platform. Instead, they prefer to share limited information in a coordinated manner to achieve a common goal without sacrificing their own benefits. This paper proposes a coordinated mechanism for global synchromodal transport planning, in which a global operator proposes incentives to local operators to select the most efficient modes and routes for shipping containers from one continent to another. An augmented Lagrangian relaxation approach is developed for the global operator to generate incentives, and a heuristic algorithm is designed to address the computational complexity of the optimization problems faced by local operators. We incorporate the proposed approaches with a rolling horizon framework to handle dynamic shipment requests received from spot markets and with a buffer strategy to address travel time uncertainties. The coordinated mechanism is tested on a real network between Asia and Europe, and results show that it can significantly increase total profits, reduce request rejections, and reduce infeasible transshipments compared to decentralized global transportation plans currently in use, particularly under scenarios with higher degrees of dynamism and uncertainty.

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This paper considers a decentralized container transport system in which two decision-makers are involved in getting a container from its origin to its destination: a logistics service provider (LSP) and a flexible service operator (FSO). While the LSP receives shipment requests from shippers and controls the movement of containers over a multimodal network by booking scheduled (e.g., barges and trains) and flexible services (e.g., trucks) from service operators, the FSO manages a fleet of vehicles (e.g., trucks) that have flexible routes and departure times to fulfill the transport requests proposed by the LSP. In the literature, most of the studies focus on either container routing, by assuming all services have fixed routes and trucks are unlimited, or vehicle routing in a road network. This paper investigates the integrated problems of routing containers and vehicles through a multimodal network from a decentralized perspective considering the decision authorities of the LSP and the FSO. A synchromodal framework is designed to control the decision process which enables to utilize the benefits of real-time mode and route changes. To investigate the impact of communication, we develop a co-planning method under the synchromodal framework to coordinate the transport plans between the LSP and the FSO in real-time. The co-planning method considers a realistic level of information exchange and adheres to no changes in their responsibilities and authorities compared to current practice. The performance of the co-planning method is evaluated under various scenarios. The experimental results show that co-planning, using expected transport request fulfillment as feedback, reduces the total costs of container transportation and decreases the distance traveled by flexible vehicles under most of the scenarios.

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As a critical feature of synchromodal transport (ST), service flexibility plays an important role in improving the utilization of resources to reduce costs, emissions, congestions, and delays. However, none of the existing studies considered flexible services under the framework of synchromodality. This paper develops a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to formulate service flexibility in ST planning. In the MILP model, vehicles with flexible services as well as fixed services are both considered, and vehicle routes and request routes are planned simultaneously. Due to the computational complexity, an Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search heuristic is designed to solve the problem. Several customized operators are designed based on the characteristics of the studied problem. The proposed model is compared with the models developed in a highly-cited paper and a newly published paper that do not consider service flexibility. Case studies on small instances verified that the proposed model with flexibility performs better on all scenarios, including scenarios with different weights for the individual objectives, scenarios under congestion, and dynamic optimization scenarios. On large instances (up to 1600 shipment requests), the proposed model with flexibility reduces the cost by 14% on average compared with the existing models in the literature.

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This paper investigates a dynamic and stochastic shipment matching problem, in which a platform aims to provide online decisions on accepting or rejecting newly received shipment requests and decisions on shipment-to-service matches in global synchromodal transportation. The problem is considered dynamic since the platform receives requests and travel times continuously in real time. The problem is considered stochastic since the information of requests and travel times is not known with certainty. To solve the problem, we develop a rolling horizon framework to handle dynamic events, a hybrid stochastic approach to address uncertainties, and a preprocessing-based heuristic algorithm to generate timely solutions at each decision epoch. The experimental results indicate that for instances with above 50% degrees of dynamism, the hybrid stochastic approach that considers shipment request and travel time uncertainties simultaneously outperforms the approaches that do not consider any uncertainty or just consider one type of uncertainties in terms of total profits, the number of infeasible transshipments, and delay in deliveries.

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This paper investigates a dynamic and stochastic shipment matching problem faced by network operators in hinterland synchromodal transportation. We consider a platform that receives contractual and spot shipment requests from shippers, and receives multimodal services from carriers. The platform aims to provide optimal matches between shipment requests and multimodal services within a finite horizon under spot request uncertainty. Due to the capacity limitation of multimodal services, the matching decisions made for current requests will affect the ability to make good matches for future requests. To solve the problem, this paper proposes an anticipatory approach which consists of a rolling horizon framework that handles dynamic events, a sample average approximation method that addresses uncertainties, and a progressive hedging algorithm that generates solutions at each decision epoch. Compared with the greedy approach which is commonly used in practice, the anticipatory approach has total cost savings up to 8.18% under realistic instances. The experimental results highlight the benefits of incorporating stochastic information in dynamic decision making processes of the synchromodal matching system.

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Global intermodal transportation involves the movement of shipments between inland terminals located in different continents by using ships, barges, trains, trucks, or any combination among them through integrated planning at a network level. One of the challenges faced by global operators is the matching of shipment requests with transport services in an integrated global network. The characteristics of the global intermodal shipment matching problem include acceptance and matching decisions, soft time windows, capacitated services, and transshipments between multimodal services. The objective of the problem is to maximize the total profits which consist of revenues, travel costs, transfer costs, storage costs, delay costs, and carbon tax. Travel time uncertainty has significant effects on the feasibility and profitability of matching plans. However, travel time uncertainty has not been considered in global intermodal transport yet leading to significant delays and infeasible transshipments. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes a chance-constrained programming model in which travel times are assumed stochastic. We conduct numerical experiments to validate the performance of the stochastic model in comparison to a deterministic model and a robust model. The experiment results show that the stochastic model outperforms the benchmarks in total profits.

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With the increasing volumes of containers in global trade, efficient global container transport planning becomes more and more important. To improve the competitiveness in global supply chains, stakeholders turn to collaborate with each other at vertical as well as horizontal level, namely synchromodal transportation. Synchromodality is the provision of efficient, effective, and sustainable transport plans for all the shipments involved in an integrated network driven by advanced information technologies. However, the decision-making processes of a global synchromodal transport system is very complex. First, time-dependent travel times caused by traffic congestion need to be considered. Second, a dynamic approach that handles real-time shipment requests in a synchromodal network is required. Third, spot requests received from spot markets are unknown in advance. Fourth, travel time uncertainty is not handled yet for global synchromodal transport networks. Fifth, distributed approaches that stimulate cooperation among multiple stakeholders involved in global container transportation are still missing. This thesis addresses the above-mentioned challenges with dynamic, stochastic, and coordinated models.@en

Hinterland intermodal transportation is the movement of containers between deep-sea ports and inland terminals by using trucks, trains, barges, or any combination of them. Synchromodal transportation, as an extension of intermodal transportation, refers to transport systems with dynamic updating of plans by incorporating real-time information. The trend towards spot markets and digitalization in hinterland intermodal transportation gives rise to online synchromodal transportation problems. This paper investigates a dynamic shipment matching problem in which a centralized platform provides online matches between shipment requests and transport services. We propose a rolling horizon approach to handle newly arrived shipment requests and develop a heuristic algorithm to generate timely solutions at each decision epoch. The experiment results demonstrate the solution accuracy and computational efficiency of the heuristic algorithm in comparison to an exact algorithm. The proposed rolling horizon approach outperforms a greedy approach from practice in total costs under various scenarios of the system.

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Multimodal transportation, as an efficient and sustainable alternative to unimodal transportation, refers to the utilization of multiple modes, the utilization of standard loading units, and flexibility in planning. The complexity of multimodal transportation at the operational level lies in being able to deal with dynamic events that are unknown before their realization. However, stochastic information on some of the events might be available from historical data. This paper proposes an anticipatory optimization approach to handle dynamic shipment requests in multimodal transportation by incorporating stochastic information of requests’ origin, destination, volume, announce time, release time and due time. The experimental results show that the anticipatory approach outperforms a myopic approach in which decisions are made only based on deterministic information in reducing total costs under various scenarios of the multimodal matching system.@en

Synchromodal transportation comprises the promising idea of integrated planning and real time switching while considering cost efficiency, time effectiveness and environmental impact. As the foundation of real time switching, integrated planning has been researched at the operational level. The intermodal routing choice problem is the major problem at the operational level. From an integrated planning perspective, it is typically defined as a multi-commodity multimodal routing choice problem. This paper proposes to consider the routing choice problem as a multi-commodity multi-service matching problem with cost sharing characteristic of self-operated intermodal services among commodities. The multi-commodity multi-service matching problem belongs to a many-to-many matching problem in which a commodity can be matched with multiple services by transferring at terminals, and multiple commodities can be matched with one service by considering cost sharing and capacity limitations. The objective of the matching model is the minimization of generalized cost combining transit cost, transfer cost, inventory cost and carbon tax. Finally, this paper designs a numerical experiment to verify the feasibility of the proposed model. In order to test the influence of the new aspects of the model, four different scenarios are considered. The computational results indicate that the many-to-many matching model is suitable for container transportation systems.@en

This paper investigates the multi-commodity multi-service matching problem of synchromodal hinterland container transportation. To improve the computational efficiency, this paper proposes a many-to-one algorithm to solve the many-to-many matching problem. We assess the performance of the proposed method with 51 instances of the problem, and perform sensitivity analysis to analyze the influence of different demand patterns. The computational results indicate that the algorithm is suitable for large-scale instances of the problem.@en

Transportation of perishables such as fruits and vegetables with short shelf life in international, long distance and cooled condition, plays a key role in global cold chains. Compared with truck transportation, intermodal transportation largely reduces logistics cost and emissions, however, has less flexibility for disturbances. Another aspect is that truck transportation occupies the largest share in inland transportation, which causes traffic congestion and environmental pollutions. Synchromodal transportation is a known method to study the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of transportation by using real-time information. However, limited articles can be found about the cold chain perspective, an integral analysis is missing. Our objective is to thoroughly analyze the characteristics and challenges of synchromodal transportation in global cold chains. The critical successful factors are analyzed at first. After that, we survey on planning problems in strategic, tactical and operational level, respectively. Finally, we conclude by suggesting further research directions.@en