Bulk Material Ship Routing and Inventory Management Schedule Optimization

• US 20100088142A1
• Filed: 09/01/2009
• Published: 04/08/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/05/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company (Exxon Mobil Corporation)
• Original Assignee: ExxonMobil Research & Engineering Company (Exxon Mobil Corporation)
• Inventors: Dreher, James, El-Bakry, Amr S., Carvallo, Federico D., Song, Jin-Hwa, Connell, Richard Perry, Lee, Sangbum, Miroyannis, Aristides, Goel, Vikas, Furman, Kevin C.
• Granted Patent: US 8,374,898 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/8
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06312 Adjustment or analysis of established resource schedule, e.g. resource or task levelling, or dynamic rescheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders

Abstract

The present invention is a computational system to generate feasible marine transportation schedules given a proposed bulk material supply chain. The decision support tool will fulfill the objectives and scope defined above. The technology employed will require (a) the use of mathematical programming modeling techniques (mixed integer linear programming) to mathematically formulate the business problem, and (b) advanced proprietary solution methods to produce solutions satisfying all constraints of the mathematical model while optimizing an objective function. The decision support tool has the following capabilities: Read input data, Generate feasible bulk material ship Schedule, Evaluate bulk material ship Schedule with User-defined Objective Function, Allow Case comparison, Graphical user interface (GUI) for specifying input data and displaying results.

Claims

1. A method to plan and schedule bulk material distribution for the transportation of bulk materials from supply terminals to demand terminals so that the supply terminals do not have an over-supply and the demand terminals do not have an undersupply comprising:

a) obtaining input data specifying the requirements to be satisfied for the marine transportation schedule to meet predetermined objectives,

b) determining a feasible schedule from said input data,

c) evaluating said feasible schedule to determine how well the schedule meets the predetermined objectives, and

d) iterating the feasible schedule by adjusting the input data to minimize deviations from the predetermined objectives.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said input data includes shipping input data, production terminal input data, demand terminal input data, constraints/rules, output/variables, and objectives.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said input data includes time horizon, assumed travel times, throughputs and tolerance, inventory limits, vessel information, initial system conditions.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein said vessel information includes capacity, speed, number, and route constraints.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein said initial system conditions include vessel locations and inventory levels.

6. The method of claim 3 wherein said input data further includes objectives.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein said objectives include deliver full annual volume, minimize time below inventory lower bound, minimize time above inventory upper bound.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein said objective further includes minimize deviations from feasible schedule.

9. A system for planning and scheduling bulk material distribution and transportation comprising:

a) a schedule generator for generating a schedule

b) a schedule evaluator

c) a case management system for storing the schedule

d) means for iterating the schedule

10. A method to determine marine transportation schedules for the transportation of liquid natural gas (LNG) from LNG terminals to Re-gasification terminals so that LNG terminals do not have an over-supply and Re-gasification terminals do not have an undersupply of LNG comprising:

a) obtaining input data specifying the requirements to be satisfied for the marine transportation schedule to meet predetermined objectives,

b) determining a feasible schedule from said input data by optimizing the predetermined objectives.

c) evaluating said feasible schedule to determine how well the schedule meets the predetermined objectives, and

d) iterating the feasible schedule by adjusting the input data to minimize deviations from the predetermined objectives.

11. A method to generate feasible ship schedules among LNG terminals by:

a) generating minimum set of travel choices by eliminating infeasible choices from the time-space network,

b) assigning initial voyage to each ship among terminals,

c) improving ship schedule in a sub-network iteratively by reducing the number of ships in the time-space network.