A cost-criticality based (max, +) optimization model for operations scheduling

Abstract

The following work proposes a (max, +) optimization model for scheduling batch transfer operations in a flow network by integrating a cost/criticality criterion to prioritize conflicting operations in terms of resource allocation. The case study is a seaport for oil export where real industrial data has been gathered. The work is extendable to flow networks in general and aims at proposing a general, intuitive algebraic modeling framework through which flow transfer operations can be scheduled based on a criterion that integrates the potential costs due to late client service and critical device reliability in order to satisfy a given set of requests through a set of disjoint alignments in a pipeline network. The research exploits results from previous work and it is suitable for systems handling different client priorities and in which device reliability has an important short-term impact on operations.