O comércio marítimo internacional sob a ótica da teoria das filas

Abstract

As it concentrates 12% of world trade and offers an alternative route for ships that transit between Asia and Europe, the Suez Canal is one of the most important waterways in the world. In March 2021, an incident involving a mega freighter obstructed the path for six days, altering the system's logistics and creating an huge congestion of ships, later resulting in overloading the destination ports. In this scenario, Operational Research acts as an analysis and decision-making tool to optimize routes and assess logistical costs through scientific methods. Queuing Theory, as an OR tool, studies the formation and characteristics of queues to predict their behavior and outline action plans or alternative routes so that waiting time and costs are reduced. For data collection, a literature review was used, focusing on the case study of the blockade of the Suez Canal. The work aims to show the impact of the Suez Canal blockade on the ships' destination ports and on the route itself, through the analysis of the queue formed and its dissolution time, as well as indicating other chokepoints whose obstruction would have a strong influence on global trade. The study places maritime transport from the perspective of queuing theory, expanding the operational research study area and contributing to the optimization of maritime routes.