Application of a combined fuzzy multiple criteria decision making and optimization programming model to the container transportation demand split

The container transportation demand split is one of the most important decision issues for government transportation departments and port organizations. In previous studies, many researchers assumed that the shipping carrier would aim to minimize the total operation cost by selecting an appropriate port as the most favorable one to call, and the shipper would aim to minimize the inland freight cost by selecting the nearest port as the most favorable one to import and export international trade containers. Thus, a number of mathematical programming models have been developed. But in practice, the shipping carrier not only aims to minimize the total operation cost but also takes into account other criteria such as the volume of containers and port facility conditions when choosing an appropriate port as the most favorable one to call. The shipper not only aims to minimize the inland freight cost but also takes into account the frequency of ship callings when choosing an appropriate port as the most favorable one to import and export international trade containers.Thus, the purpose of this paper is to formulate a combined fuzzy multiple criteria decision making and optimization programming model for solving the container transportation demand split problem. There are two stages in this combined model: in stage one, we first compute the container transportation demand split rate by using fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) method; whereas in stage two, an optimization mathematical programming network model is proposed for determining the inland origin destination (O-D) of import/export containers. The utilization of the proposed model is demonstrated with a case of Taiwanese ports. The results show that the proposed combined fuzzy MCDM and optimization programming model can be used to explain the container transportation demand split practice.