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Optimal Scheduling Models For Ferry Companies Under Alliances, Shangyao Yan, Chia-Hung Chen, Hsin-Yen Chen, Tze-Chiang Lou

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

Ferry companies in Taiwan increasingly ally themselves with other ferry companies as a means of forming more complete networks, to operate more efficiently. The more complex ferry fleet routing and scheduling processes are not only important in each company’s operations, but also have a bearing on the alliance. In this research, we employ network flow techniques to construct several coordinated scheduling models to help solve for the most satisfactory schedules for the allied ferry companies. Finally, we perform a case study based on real operating data from two Taiwan ferry companies to evaluate the models. The preliminary results show that …