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Abstract

Marine hub-and-spoke networks have been applied to routing containerships for over two decades, but few papers have devoted their attention to these networks. The marine network problems are known as single assignment nonstrict hub location problems (SNHLPs), which deal with the optimal location of hubs and allocation of spokes to hubs in a network, allowing direct routes between some spokes. In this paper we present a satisfactory approach for solving SHNLPs. The quadratic integer profit programming consists of two-stage computational algorithms: a hub location model and a spoke allocation model. We apply a heuristic scheme based on the shortest distance rule and an experimental case based on the Trans-Pacific Routes is presented to illustrate the model’s formulation and solution methods. The results indicate that the model is a concave function, exploiting the economies of scale for total profit with respect to the number of hubs. The spoke allocation may change an optimal choice of hub locations.

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