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Robust optimization of bulk gas distribution

  • US 8,762,291 B2
  • Filed: 10/28/2010
  • Issued: 06/24/2014
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2010
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A computer-implemented method for generating a robust delivery schedule for delivering a commodity product to a set of customers, the method comprising:

  • generating, by operation of at least one computer processor, one or more production outage scenarios based on historical production facility outage data, wherein each production outage scenario specifies a period of time during which a first one of one or more production facilities is presumed to be unavailable to produce the commodity product, wherein the commodity product comprises industrial gases delivered to a storage tank at each customer site via at least one delivery truck;

    generating a set of solutions, wherein each solution specifies a delivery schedule for delivering the commodity product to the set of customers;

    determining a cost for each solution relative to each generated scenario;

    evaluating the cost of each solution according to a specified evaluation method to compute a robustness measure for each solution, wherein the robustness measure is determined based an expected change in the cost of the solution relative to the one or more production outage scenarios; and

    returning, as the robust delivery schedule, a solution having a best determined cost versus robustness measure tradeoff, relative to other solutions in the generated set of solutions.

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