System and method of vessel scheduling for product distribution
First Claim
Patent Images
1. A system for assigning products to transportation compartments, comprising:
- one or more transportation compartments configured to hold one or more products;
a computer comprising a processor configured to receive a schedule request and one or more constraints for compartment packing of the one or more products in the one or more transportation compartments and generate a packing plan comprising one or more transportation compartment assignments based on the one or more constraints using a combinatorial search that generates a solution represented by a vector V=(v_1, . . . , v_n), an ith component of the vector being a product and an amount assigned to an ith transportation compartment, the combinatorial search;
constructs a partial solution with elements fixed for the first k elements of the vector where k is less than or equal to n;
constructs the set of possible candidates S for the (k+1)st position;
constructs an extension by adding the next element from S to the partial solution; and
constantly checks the extension to determine whether the extension yields a partial solution, wherein the processor continues to extend the partial solution as long as the extension yields a partial solution, and when S is empty, the processor backtracks to v_k and replaces v_k with a next candidate; and
at least one of the one or more products is assigned to be packed into at least one of the one or more transportation compartments based on the generated packing plan.
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Abstract
A system, computer-implemented method, and software for automatically planning and scheduling ocean-going vessels for oil distribution is provided. The scheduling of the vessels is based on a filtered beam search and greedy heuristic. A server can be used for receiving a schedule request and one or more constraints for scheduling one or more vessels from one or more users. An optimization engine can be used for generating a schedule based at least in part on the one or more constraints using a beam search algorithm.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. A system for assigning products to transportation compartments, comprising:
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one or more transportation compartments configured to hold one or more products; a computer comprising a processor configured to receive a schedule request and one or more constraints for compartment packing of the one or more products in the one or more transportation compartments and generate a packing plan comprising one or more transportation compartment assignments based on the one or more constraints using a combinatorial search that generates a solution represented by a vector V=(v_1, . . . , v_n), an ith component of the vector being a product and an amount assigned to an ith transportation compartment, the combinatorial search; constructs a partial solution with elements fixed for the first k elements of the vector where k is less than or equal to n; constructs the set of possible candidates S for the (k+1)st position; constructs an extension by adding the next element from S to the partial solution; and constantly checks the extension to determine whether the extension yields a partial solution, wherein the processor continues to extend the partial solution as long as the extension yields a partial solution, and when S is empty, the processor backtracks to v_k and replaces v_k with a next candidate; and at least one of the one or more products is assigned to be packed into at least one of the one or more transportation compartments based on the generated packing plan. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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7. A computer-implemented method for assigning products to transportation compartments, comprising:
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receiving, by a computer comprising a processor, a schedule request and one or more constraints for compartment packing of one or more products in one or more transportation compartments; generating, by the processor, a packing plan comprising one or more transportation compartment assignments based on the one or more constraints using a combinatorial search, the combinatorial search; generating a solution represented by a vector V=(v_1, . . . , v_n), an ith component of the vector being a product and an amount assigned to an ith transportation compartment; constructing a partial solution with elements fixed for the first k elements of the vector where k is less than or equal to n; constructing the set of possible candidates S for the (k+1)st position; constructing an extension by adding the next element from S to the partial solution; and constantly checking the extension to determine whether the extension yields a partial solution, wherein the processor continues to extend the partial solution as long as the extension yields a partial solution, and when S is empty, the computer backtracks to v_k and replaces v_k with a next candidate; and assigning at least one of the one or more products to be packed into at least one of the one or more transportation compartments based on the generated packing plan. - View Dependent Claims (8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software for assigning products to transportation compartments, the software when executed by one or more computers is configured to:
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receive a schedule request and one or more constraints for compartment packing of one or more products in one or more transportation compartments; generate a packing plan comprising one or more transportation compartment assignments based on the one or more constraints using a combinatorial search that generates a solution represented by a vector V=(v_1, . . . v_n), an ith component of the vector being a product and an amount assigned to an ith transportation compartment, the combinatorial search; constructs a partial solution with elements fixed for the first k elements of the vector where k is less than or equal to n; constructs the set of possible candidates S for the (k+1)st position; constructs an extension by adding the next element from S to the partial solution; and constantly checks the extension to determine whether the extension yields a partial solution, wherein the processor continues to extend the partial solution as long as the extension yields a partial solution, and when S is empty, the processor backtracks to v_k and replaces v_k with a next candidate; and assign at least one of the one or more products to be packed into at least one of the one or more transportation compartments based on the generated packing plan. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17)
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Specification