A bi-objective problem of scheduling fuel supply vessels

Abstract

Fleets of fuel supply vessels are used to provide ships anchored in ports with different oil products. Demand is satisfied based on a pull system, where oil shipments are triggered by orders placed by customers and delivered on a specific agreed time window. The aim of this paper is to suggest proper scheduling policies for a fleet of fuel supply vessels, under the vessels’ availability/capacity and the customers’ demand constraints, so as to obtain the Pareto optimal solutions that minimize the cost and the total environmental burden expressed in CO2 emissions. The methodology employed for solving the problem is the ∈-constraint approach combined with a heuristic algorithm. The model is tested and evaluated for a small Hellenic oil company’s data. The model can be easily instantiated according to the input data and adjusted to the fleet scheduler’s needs, thus making the decision process faster and leading to lower costs and higher environmental savings.