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A Large Neighbourhood Search Heuristic for a Periodic Supply Vessel Planning Problem Arising in Offshore Oil and Gas Operations

Abstract

The periodic supply vessel planning problem arises in supply operations performed by a
heterogeneous fleet of vessels operating from an onshore base to offshore installations. These vessels
must supply the installations on a periodic basis. Given a planning horizon, the problem consists of
determining the fleet composition as well as the vessel schedules. This paper proposes a large
neighbourhood search heuristic capable of solving large instances of the problem. On small instances
for which an optimal solution is known, the heuristic consistently finds optimal or near-optimal
solutions. It can also solve larger instances which are intractable by an exact algorithm.
Keywords: Maritime transportation, offshore logistics, routing and scheduling, large neighbourhood
search heuristic.

Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • Molde University College - Specialized University in Logistics
  • University of Montreal
  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology
  • SINTEF Ocean

Year

2013

Published in

INFOR: Information Systems and Operational Research

ISSN

0315-5986

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Volume

50

Issue

4

Page(s)

195 - 204

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