System reliability analysis for a stochastic liner container shipping service with stochastic container terminals

The liner shipping company could have an advantage over its competitors while its liner container shipping system (LCSS) can successfully transport the requested demand. In reality, the unstable sea state, terrible weather, sailor's negligence, and the condition of vessels would affect the number of slots to place the container when shipping on the different legs. Thus, the number of slots on the vessel for placing containers should be regarded as stochastic. When the vessel berths at the container terminal, the quay cranes are the main facility to process containers, due to the quay cranes that other competitors could be reserved, the number of available quay cranes should be also regarded as stochastic. This study proposes an algorithm to analyze the network reliability of an LCSS by constructing a stochastic liner container shipping network (SLCSN) model. The network reliability is defined as the probability that all vessels in the SLCSN can satisfy the demands within the time threshold. For an executive of the liner container shipping company, the network reliability can be utilized as the performance indicator to make an appropriate managerial decision.