Routing problem with pendular and cyclic service in a hierarchical structure of hub and spoke with multiple allocation of sub-hubs

Transport of goods is a theme that consumes a lot of time in the planning of companies, because it involves different factors that influence in the quality of result. The case of liner shipping network is considered. This one is involved with transportation of bigger volume of goods between different continents. Optimizing the service network, already is possible to reduce the number of vessels and, consequently, of crews, or the lead time of a demand, or the fuel consumption, or increase the number of customers meet in the same time interval. With a hub and spoke structure it is possible to aggregate demands of different points in some ports and it can get a bigger scale economy of transport. This work proposes a hierarchical structure of hub and spoke where the service network between hubs, representing deep sea operations, is in pendular form and the service sub-network, formed by spokes and its respective hub, representing short sea operations, is in cycle form. The use of sub-hubs linking together two sub-network, permits to create alternative paths for some demands, decreasing the travel time and consequently decreasing the CO₂ emission of network, conciliating an economy of spending with a sustainable logistic.