A decision support system tool for the transportation by barge of import containers : a case study

In this paper, we present a DSS that generates schedules for the transportation of containers by barge in the hinterland, in particular from sea terminals to an inland terminal. As a case study, we propose the transportation from the Ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp to a terminal in the south of the Netherlands, where the problem is typical. This problem is modeled as a heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem. The main decision is based on the trade-off of either consolidating containers to generate economies of scale with barges or alternatively dispatch, expensively and quickly, single containers by truck. The DSS is flexible as it can be applied to different settings by properly tuning the several parameters in the model. With numerical experiments, based on real world data, we evaluate the effectiveness of this system and its applicability