Optimising freight consolidation for less than container load shipments: A case study of DHL global forwarding Vietnam company

Abstract

ABSTRACT Currently, accompanying with the globalization, trading activities among countries have been increased rapidly. It leads to the robust growth of the maritime transportation industry. Freight logistics service providers and freight forwarders are becoming increasingly important. This thesis considers a typical problem faced by a freight forwarder. The forwarder in this study is DHL Global Forwarding Vietnam Company. It provides a service called Less than Container Load (LCL) Buyer Consolidation Shipment. Shipments come from different shippers in Ho Chi Minh City. These shippers need to export their products to the same consignee in Taiwan and the quantity of all cargo types of each shipper are not enough to fulfill the container. Goods are packed and transported to gather at the consolidation warehouse located at Cat Lai port. The shipments from these shippers have to be consolidated to optimize the volume of each container. After that, these containers are delivered to the destination port by maritime transport. When arriving in the destination port, consignee will pick up these containers at the destination port themselves. The objective of this paper is finding an allocation of cargos into containers in other to help forwarder minimize the total operation cost of moving a shipment from the warehouse in Cat Lai port to the destination port in Taiwan. An integer programming model is developed to solve this problem.