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Bunker purchasing with contracts

delete2014-05-01
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PRE
AI
C
Christian Edinger Munk Plum *
P
Peter Neergaard Jensen
D
David Pisinger
DOI:10.1057/mel.2014.7delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
The cost for bunker fuel represents a major part of the daily running costs of liner shipping vessels. The vessels, sailing on a fixed roundtrip of ports, can lift bunker at these ports, having differing and fluctuating prices. The stock of bunker on a vessel is subject to a number of operational constraints such as capacity limits, reserve requirements and sulphur content. Contracts are often used for bunker purchasing, ensuring supply and often giving a discounted price. A contract can supply any vessel in a period and port, and is thus a shared resource between vessels, which must be distributed optimally to reduce overall costs. The Bunker Purchasing with Contracts Problem has been formulated as a mixed integer programme, which has been Dantzig-Wolfe decomposed. To solve it, a novel column generation algorithm has been developed. The algorithm has been run on a series of real-world instances with up to 500+ vessels and 500+ contracts, and provide near optimal solutions. This makes it possible for a major liner shipping company to plan bunker purchasing on a global level, and provides an efficient tool for assessing new contracts.
Keywords:
bunker purchasing
liner shipping
mathematical programming
maritime optimization
decomposition methods
mixed integer programming
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Journal

Maritime Economics and Logistics cover
Maritime Economics and Logistics
IF:
4.8
Papers:
494
Citations:
1.5K

Organization

T
technical university of denmark
Scholars:
2.6W
Papers: 2.8W
Citations: 37