Fleet management models and algorithms of an oil-tanker routing and scheduling problem

摘要

This paper explores models and algorithms for routing and scheduling ships in a maritime transportation system. The principal thrust of this research effort is focused on the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) Problem. This problem is of great economic significance to the State of Kuwait, whose economy has been traditionally dominated to a large extent by the oil sector, and any enhancement in the existing ad-hoc scheduling procedure has the potential for significant savings. A mixed-integer programming model for the KPC problem is constructed in this paper. The resulting mathematical formulation is rather complex to solve due to the integrality conditions and the overwhelming size of the problem for a typical demand contract scenario.