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A decision tool for scheduling fleets of fuel supply vessels

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Abstract

Fleets of fuel supply vessels are used to provide ships anchored in ports 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 day. The aim of this paper is to develop a time-effective decision tool in order to aid the fleet schedulers to decide in a very short time (usually less than 10 min in the ships’ fuel supply business) if they will accept new orders, based on the fleet’s capacity and availability, and generate a feasible near-optimal operation schedule. The tool was tested in a small Hellenic oil company and the empirical evaluation is presented.

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Correspondence to Nikolaos P. Rachaniotis.

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Rachaniotis, N.P., Masvoula, M. A decision tool for scheduling fleets of fuel supply vessels. Oper Res Int J 20, 1543–1557 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-018-0377-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-018-0377-2

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