A Mathematical Modelling and Optimization Approach for a Maritime Facility Location Transshipment Problem

Abstract

This paper presents an optimization based mathematical modelling approach for a single source single destination crude oil facility location transshipment problem. We began by formulating a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model and use a rolling horizon heuristic to find an optimal location for a storage facility within a restricted continuous region. We next design a hybrid two-stage algorithm that combines judicious facility locations resulting from the proposed model into a previously developed column generation approach. The results indicate that improved overall operational costs can be achieved by strategically determining cost-effective locations of the transshipment facility.