A Hybrid Reactive Tabu Search for Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning

We solve the liner shipping fleet repositioning problem (LSFRP), a key problem in the liner shipping industry, using a hybrid reactive tabu search and simulated annealing algorithm in combination with novel local search neighborhoods. Liner carriers reposition vessels between services in order to add, remove or modify services in their network. Repositioning vessels costs between hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars, meaning finding cost efficient repositioning plans is an important goal for liner carriers. We introduce a reactive tabu search approach and hybridize it with simulated annealing, allowing us to find a combined $147,000 in additional profit over the state-of-the-art approach across 44 public LSFRP instances.