Liner shipping network design with sensitive demand

Purpose This paper aims to examine containership routing and speed optimization for maritime liner services. It focuses on a realistic case in which the transport demand, consequently collected revenue from visited ports depend sailing speed. Design/methodology/approach The authors present an integer non-linear programming model fleet sizing problem, of every leg, be included service their sequence are optimized based net line's profit. heuristic approach that is discretization genetic algorithm solve problem large size instances. They application line provided by COSCO 2017 between Asia Europe. Findings numerical results show proposed provides good quality solutions after reasonable computation time. In addition, demand sensitivity has great impact selected route therefore profit function. Moreover, more sensitive speed, higher value. Research limitations/implications vessel carrying capacity not considered explicit way. Originality/value important aspect shipping, i.e. brings novel context strategies market volatility together network design. perspective been addressed previously.