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Purchasing Transportation Services from Ocean Carriers

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Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science ((ISOR,volume 220))

Abstract

Reducing transportation costs is priority number one for global shippers who need to move their cargo containers all over the world. To achieve such cost reduction, a shipper can use what is called a reverse auction mechanism to purchase transportation services, by inviting carriers, i.e. liner shipping companies, to bid competitively to sell their services. As part of the process, carriers often seek commitments from the shipper, and internal business units of the shipper often express their own preferences when it comes choosing the carriers, which naturally complicates the shipper’s decisions. In this chapter, we first review existing studies on the transportation service procurement problem. Based on a new general optimization model, we then discuss extensions to the existing known results, as well as present several results new to the literature.

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Acknowledgement

The work presented in this chapter was partly supported by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the research grant number G-YL96.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Zhou Xu & Xiaofan Lai

Authors
  1. Zhou Xu
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  2. Xiaofan Lai
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhou Xu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Industrial Engineering & Logistics Mgmt, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

    Chung-Yee Lee

  2. Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Qiang Meng

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Xu, Z., Lai, X. (2015). Purchasing Transportation Services from Ocean Carriers. In: Lee, CY., Meng, Q. (eds) Handbook of Ocean Container Transport Logistics. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11891-8_13

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