Application of dea method to intermodal container transport

Abstract

In order to make better assessment of intermodal container transportation, the authors have analyzed DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) method in deciding the most favorable container line from Serbian ports to the near East ports. To allow for applications to a wide variety of activities, term organization unit (Decision Making Unit – DMU) refers to container line. DEA Method has been used to give the estimation of efficiency of operations in organization units. Organization units are container lines in which containers are loaded with mineral water in bottles. The main points in transportation net are factories of mineral water (Knjaz Milos Arandjelovac and Minaqua Novi Sad), Serbian ports ( the Port of Belgrade, the Port of Danube Pancevo and the Port of Prahovo) and nine Mediterranean ports in the near East area. Amount of mineral water that is dispatching from factories to Serbian ports is equal to amount that can be loaded to one container. Having containerized in Serbian ports mineral water is reloaded to the river–sea ships with unified dimensions, so the ships are continuing to travel to the near East ports. The near East ports are the ending points. Input variables in DEA problem are transportation costs and strategy resistance factor in function of container line. Time traveling of one container is in a function of container line and transportation capabilities of container lines are output variables. Transportation costs are counted on the base of integer programming method and Dijkstra algorithm.

First Published Online: 05 Oct 2011

Keyword : data envelopment analysis (DEA), decision making unit (DMU), TEU, container, mineral water, river–sea ship