Repair Cost Minimization Problem for Containers: A Case Study

With the increase of global trade activities and the decrease in transportation costs, the volume of international trade has grown considerably, yielding to an increase in the logistics activities as well as the number of containers used in transport. Hence, containers gradually deteriorate over time and logistics companies start to diminish the repair costs of the containers, as well. This study addresses the repair cost minimization problem for containers where the objective is to minimize the total transportation, repairing and delay time costs. The problem is formulated as a variant of the well-known transportation problem, where we assume that the broken containers transport to repair depots, and the fixed containers are delivered from the repair depots to the customers until the requested due date. In order to monitor the performance of the proposed model, realistic test instances are constructed. Optimal solutions are achieved within 40 min for relatively small and moderate test instances.