Robust supply vessel planning

Abstract

In the supply vessel planning problem, a set of offshore installations receives supplies from an onshore supply depot on a regular basis. This service is performed by a fleet of offshore supply vessels. The supply vessel planning problem then consists of determining the optimal fleet size and mix of supply vessels and the corresponding weekly voyages and schedules. This is a real planning problem faced by among others the energy company Statoil. In a previous study this problem was examined and a deterministic voyage based solution approach presented. In this study we address the problem of creating robust schedules to the supply vessel planning problem. Several approaches are tested and compared in a computational study, and the results show that there is an improvement potential if some robustness considerations are made when finding a solution to the supply vessel planning problem. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.