An Integrated Approach for Facility Location and Supply Vessel Planning with Time Windows

Abstract

This paper presents a new model of two-echelon periodic supply vessel planning problem with time windows mix of facility location (PSVPTWMFL-2E) in an offshore oil and gas industry. The new mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) modelconsists ofa fleet composition problem and a location-routing problem (LRP). The aim of the model is to determine the size and type of large vessels in the first echelon and supply vessels in the second echelon.Additionally,the location of warehouse(s),optimal voyages and related schedules in both echelons are purposed.The total cost should be kept at a minimum and the need of operation regions and offshore installationsshould be fulfilled.A two-stage exact solution method, which is common for maritime transportation problems, is presented for small and medium-sized problems. In the first stage, all voyages are generated and in the second stage, optimal fleet composition, voyages and schedules are determined. Furthermore, optimal onshore base(s) to install central warehouse(s)and optimal operation region(s) to send offshore installation’s needs are decided in the second stage.