ABSTRACT
Scheduling the shipment of products to destinations is a challenging problem faced by many organizations that are interested in improving the efficiency of their transportation systems due to the high cost associated with operational and penalty costs. Efficient transportation systems have the potential for enormous savings. For example, in the oil industry, a typical vessel in a fleet of oil tankers usually costs millions of U.S. dollars, and the daily operational costs of an oil tanker amounts to tens of thousands of U.S. dollars. Furthermore, considerable penalties are levied for either shortages in fulfilling customer demands, or requiring customers to carry higher than desired levels of inventory during certain periods. Hence, a formal modeling approach that compromises among these different cost components in an effective manner becomes imperative.
