Cargo ships routing and scheduling: Survey of models and problems

Abstract

When a ship costs thousands of dollars per day, significant savings can be achieved by proper fleet routing and scheduling. In contrast to vehicle scheduling, relatively little work has been done in ship routing and scheduling. This paper discusses briefly the differences between vehicle and ship routing and scheduling and the reasons for the low attention to ship scheduling in the past. The various modes of operation of cargo ships are described and a classification scheme for ship routing and scheduling models and problems is proposed. A review of ship routing, scheduling and related models is provided. The review is broken down into the following categories: transportation system models, liner operations, tramp shipping, industrial operations and other models. Finally, recent trends in ship scheduling, shortcomings in existing models and requirements from realistic models are discussed.