Abstract
The number of shipping services by very large container ships is decreasing in Japan because they are avoiding the inefficiency of picking cargos at distributed Japanese ports. On the other hand, China and Korea have concentrated their investment on a few large ports to create hub-spoke networks and to keep their influences on the physical distributions in East Asia region. This paper describes a container logistics simulation for designing of international container transportation networks. We discuss the economical benefit of concentrating international cargos in one or two major Japanese hub ports by evaluating the total shipping cost of shippers and shipping companies. The result shows the suitable selection of Japanese hub ports and its benefit to domestic and foreign shippers.
