Empty Container Repositioning Just Got Easier

By Capt. Vijay Minocha

Moving empty containers is expensive, and – unlike paid-for laden containers – it comes straight out of the profit margins of liner companies. In fact, empty container repositioning from a surplus to a deficit location ranks among the top 5 cost items of a liner shipping company and is only preceded by bunker, terminal and charter hire costs!

The pressure from management on an operations team is high to meet an ever-changing cargo demand with a finite and dispersed number of containers, while keeping costs down.

“If only there was an optimized, intelligent empty container repositioning solution that could do this for me, while maximizing profit,” said every liner company’s operations team lead.

AI-Powered, Whip-Smart, Easy to Use Container Repositioning Solution: It’s OptiBox

We are proud to introduce the new kid on the Solverminds’ block.
OptiBox is exactly what its name says: an empty box or container repositioning optimizer. While the name is short, its functionality is extensive, and the full benefit it brings to liner companies is massive. Plus, we thought OptiBox would just be easier to say than “the AI-powered, easy-to-use empty container repositioning solution that the world has been waiting for!”. You’re welcome.

As an overview, OptiBox does the following

• Quickly identifies all your equipment imbalances around the world.
• Forecasts supply and demand, and what container stock is presently at a location and will look like over the next few weeks, while also catering to projected exports.
• Highlights the most direct, most profitable route to reposition surplus containers to deficit locations.

How it works

If you want to take a little peek under the hood to see what powers OptiBox, you’ll find the workings of Optimization algorithm, artificial intelligence (AI), and Time Series forecast.

At its core, OptiBox has one powerful, overriding objective:
to reduce global empty repositioning costs.

Moving empty containers is expensive, and – unlike paid-for laden containers – it comes straight out of the profit margins of liner companies. In fact, empty container repositioning from a surplus to a deficit location ranks among the top 5 cost items of a liner shipping company and is only preceded by bunker, terminal and charter hire costs!

The pressure from management on an operations team is high to meet an ever-changing cargo demand with a finite and dispersed number of containers, while keeping costs down.

“If only there was an optimized, intelligent empty container repositioning solution that could do this for me, while maximizing profit,” said every liner company’s operations team lead.

AI-Powered, Whip-Smart, Easy to Use Container Repositioning Solution: It’s OptiBox

We are proud to introduce the new kid on the Solverminds’ block.
OptiBox is exactly what its name says: an empty box or container repositioning optimizer. While the name is short, its functionality is extensive, and the full benefit it brings to liner companies is massive. Plus, we thought OptiBox would just be easier to say than “the AI-powered, easy-to-use empty container repositioning solution that the world has been waiting for!”. You’re welcome.

As an overview, OptiBox does the following

• Quickly identifies all your equipment imbalances around the world.
• Forecasts supply and demand, and what container stock is presently at a location and will look like over the next few weeks, while also catering to projected exports.
• Highlights the most direct, most profitable route to reposition surplus containers to deficit locations.

A picture is worth a thousand words hours

Quickly, quietly, efficiently, OptiBox automatically computes and visually displays global imbalances. This is based on equipment movement it receives from the equipment control module. From this output, a repositioning work order can be created.

It also estimates how much it will cost to reposition these containers in advance, and in the beginning of the year so that you don’t have to worry about calculating your budget and best-cost control. As the year progresses, you can see how you deviate from budgets as you execute the suggestions from OptiBox for optimal repositioning of your equipment to cater to ever-changing commercial requirements.

The optimizer not only saves you costs, it saves you thousands of man-hours over the long run.

Why liner companies choose OptiBox

OptiBox is the operations team’s best asset. It makes effective, proactive decisions possible for future optimal repositioning, as well as on/off-hire, sale, or purchase decisions. Instead of making a regional repositioning decision, OptiBox allows for global decisions, which brings down the overall cost of repo.

• Optibox has a “what-if” simulation function, allowing you to see what the financial impact and equipment availability will be for various scenarios, and compares this against the repositioning output that has been generated by the global optimizer. OptiBox will even highlight the differences in outcomes.
• The OptiBox has functionality to sanity test a proposed plan, with its “Plan vs Actuals” capabilities. The planned repositioning can be compared against the actual repositioning, and variations can be identified.
• OptiBox identifies seasonal patterns as well as optimal container stock based on demand. It comes with built-in alerts and notifications, and automates route generation for all port pairs. It also provides what-if scenarios to calculate outcomes based on variables that fall outside of typical constraints and optimizes account management and cost reporting. 
• It spots opportunities of one way lease boxes over other lease options within the asset stock, effectively optimizing inventory, container turnaround time, and container velocity.
• OptiBox also identifies all the cross-joins between surplus and deficiencies with all possible combinations. Once a port pair is identified, it generates the best route within the existing restrictions, the total costs involved in moving a container from point A to point B, in an optimized routing plan.
• It even generates a route based on customer demand, and proforma generation which can be added on to the base route itself.

In fact, there is so much automation included with the OptiBox, your operations team will be able to focus on more productive tasks while the optimizer improves asset utilization!

In short, OptiBox keeps liner companies competitive, operationally agile, and financially stable. It reduces storage costs and container idle time, removes bloated inventory levels, as well as maintenance and repair costs, and depot services costs.

The quickest way to get your empty containers to where they are needed most

Embracing technology such as AI is the quickest, most cost-effective way to ensure you have optimal empty container distribution and utilization. 

Don’t delay! OptiBox is so easy to use, your existing team can use it right away, with ease.

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