A tailored branch-and-price approach for a joint tramp ship routing and bunkering problem

Qiang Meng, Shuaian Wang and Chung-Yee Lee

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2015, vol. 72, issue C, 1-19

Abstract: This paper deals with a practical tramp ship routing problem while taking into account different bunker prices at different ports, which is called the joint tramp ship routing and bunkering (JSRB) problem. Given a set of cargoes to be transported and a set of ports with different bunker prices, the proposed problem determines how to route ships to carry the cargoes and the amount of bunker to purchase at each port, in order to maximize the total profit. After building an integer linear programming model for the JSRB problem, we propose a tailored branch-and-price (B&P) solution approach. The B&P approach incorporates an efficient method for obtaining the optimal bunkering policy and a novel dominance rule for detecting inefficient routing options. The B&P approach is tested with randomly generated large-scale instances derived from real-world planning problems. All of the instances can be solved efficiently. Moreover, the proposed approach for the JSRB problem outperforms the conventional sequential planning approach and can incorporate the prediction of future cargo demand to avoid making myopic decisions.

Keywords: Maritime transportation; Ship routing and scheduling; Bunkering; Tramp shipping; Branch-and-price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.trb.2014.11.008

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