The crude oil offloading and supply problem (COSP) is a type of operation maritime inventory routing (MIR) problem encountered by petroleum companies. In COSP, the company not only is responsible for the ship scheduling to carry the crude oil from production sites to discharge ports but also must maintain inventory levels at both ports (production and consumption) between safety operational bounds to avoid disruptions in its crude oil production and/or refining processes. We show how to improve significantly the decision-making process in a Brazilian petroleum company using a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model to represent COSP. Comparison tests with a current ship-scheduling method adopted in the company indicated that the use of the MILP model increased the transportation efficiency and reduced costs by 20% on average. In addition to the quantitative gains, the use of a MILP model to solve COSP has succeeded when encountering real-life events, such as variation in production or consumption rates, berth unavailability, and changes in the storage capacities at ports.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Improving maritime inventory routing: application to a Brazilian petroleum case



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2017-01-02


    Size :

    20 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Robust Optimization for a Maritime Inventory Routing Problem

    Agra, Agostinho / Christiansen, Marielle / Hvattum, Lars Magnus et al. | British Library Online Contents | 2018


    Recent Progress Using Matheuristics for Strategic Maritime Inventory Routing

    Papageorgiou, Dimitri J. / Cheon, Myun-Seok / Harwood, Stuart et al. | Springer Verlag | 2017


    Maritime Inventory Routing Problem Considering Weather Conditions and Tide at Ports

    Radan, F. / Fatemi Ghomi, S. M. T. / Mirzapour Al-e-hashem, S. M. J. et al. | Transportation Research Record | 2022


    Alternative mixed-integer linear programming models of a maritime inventory routing problem

    Jiang, Yongheng / Grossmann, Ignacio E. | Tema Archive | 2015