Reverse logistics in the liner shipping industry

Maritime transport represents as the preferred mode for the global trade. Indeed, containerization is regarded as one of the most important improvements in maritime transport. The containers are rented (or owned) by shipping companies. However, these companies encounter excess of empty container at some ports and lack others in different ports while meeting customer demands. This lack of empty containers at certain ports of Maritime Transport Network (MTN) is simply a consequence of the imbalance in the distribution of their containers through the network because the containers are sent and did not return thereafter. The objective of this work is to solve the problem of imbalance in the distribution on container level to look for empty containers and meet customer demand. To this end, we propose a model for representing the MTN ensuring a balanced distribution of the containers. This paper presents a model of an MTN to simulate customer demand management and the transfer of full containers and the search for empty containers. Our approach is based on a heuristic method by neighborhood search. The principle of this method is to conduct a heuristic local search starting from an initial solution and moving to other neighbors, in order to allow the search for empty containers if a port does not dispose in its stock to satisfy customer demand from origin to destination.