Abstract
Academic literature reveals increased interest in ship scheduling problems. Although improved and detailed mathematical models and optimization algorithms to support ship scheduling decision making are available, few studies demonstrate the successful applications of such tools in real-life cases. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper discusses results from an applied research project on scheduling long-haul vessels for petroleum transportation for PETROBRAS, a large multinational energy company. The paper presents our experience in developing and implementing phases of an optimization-based decision support system (DSS) for ship scheduling at PETROBRAS. Comparative tests demonstrate the success of this DSS, which led to a reduction of approximately 7.5 percent in the company’s operational costs for long-haul transport compared with its previous scheduling practice. In April 2012, PETROBRAS completed its testing of the system and has since used it in production on a trial basis; since January 2013, it has been part of the corporation’s operational cost-optimization program. The results we present in this study demonstrate how operations research techniques applied to industry ship scheduling problems can result in considerable savings.
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