Abstract:
This research studies the selection of shipping lines which offer the transport service between Thailand and India. The main objective of the research is to find shipping lines with enough equipment, enough space, good transit time, with lowest transport charge as possible. Linear Programmin (LP) technique is applied to find the optimal solution on how many freight containers will be allocated to each shipping line. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is also used to find the LP analysis, and the most preferable liners in a qualitative way.The results shows that the volume negotiation strategy brings the most benefit to the company by reducing 4 percent of the freight charge monthly. However, to keep a good relationship with those liners by evenly allocated booking is also of importance, especially in a peak season and when the supply of container space is limited. The experimental results on combining a volume negotiation strategy and evenly allocated booking at least 80% to each shipping line gives the most favorable solution in practice. It reduces the freight charge by 3.82 percent or USD 21,608 monthly. The shipping lines allocated by LP are APL, MOL, MAL and HYN, which are reasonably consistent to the results from AHP.