Price reduction for single-phase folding containers used in field operations

What are the operating costs of a foldable container?

zitF inventory level of foldable containers at port iat the end of period t The total operating cost consists of consists of transportation, repositioning, holding, penalty, folding, and unfolding costs. The transportation costs consist of expenses incurred during container flow.

Do foldable containers reduce container fleet management costs?

The effect of foldable containers on the costs of container fleet management in liner shipping networks. Maritime Economics & Logistics. 2012. Vol. 14. No. 4. P. 455-479. DOI: 10.1057/mel.2012.16. Shintani, K. & Konings, R. & Imai, A. Combinable containers: A container innovation to save container fleet and empty container repositioning costs.

Do foldable containers reduce repositioning costs?

In our ECR problem, the shipping company considers both transporting loaded containers and repositioning of empty containers over a planning horizon. Because empty repositioning incurs costs and consumes vessel capacity, foldable containers are used to reduce repositioning costs.

Do folding and unfolding costs affect the cost of a container case?

We note in Table 10that the total costs of the standard container case have not changed, because the total costs are not affected by folding and unfolding costs. For further analysis, we compare the transportation and repositioning quantities of foldable containers with various folding and unfolding costs in Section 5.4. Table 9.