The container transportation chain, which consists of shippers, freight forwarders and carriers, is\r\nbecoming increasingly important for the global transportation and logistics infrastructure. Traditionally,\r\nthe carrier allocates the containers to the forwarder and then the forwarder satisfies the demands from\r\ntheir downstream customers. However, the carrier�s container capacity planning and allocation\r\ndecisions are challenged by information asymmetry from the forwarders. In order to improve the\r\ntransportation chain performance, this paper considered a transportation chain with a carrier and a\r\nforwarder and introduced the spot market, competing against the forwarders, into the transportation\r\nchain. A corresponding two-stage decision-making mechanism was proposed: Firstly, the carrier\r\ndetermined the optimal container quantity based on the forwarder�s order reservation and the\r\nforecasted demands from the spot market; secondly, the carrier allocated the containers based on the\r\nupdated demands from both the forwarder and the spot market. We proposed several models and then\r\nidentified some of their structural properties, including concavity/convexity and increasing/decreasing\r\nof functions. Then, the allocation policies were established towards different scenarios. The numerical\r\nexperiments showed that the introduction of the spot markets could improve the transportation chain\r\nperformance and the corresponding decision-making mechanism was feasible and effective.
Loading....