Trends in Ship Routing and Scheduling

Though the structure and fleet of the shipping companies may differ considerably, they have one main objective in common. This is to utilize their fleets optimally. Consequently, shipping companies have many similar complex, extensive planning problems, ranging from the strategic to the tactical/operational levels. Typical examples at these different planning levels are problems like deciding the optimal size of the fleet, finding the optimal route and schedule for each ship in a given fleet or even selecting the best course for a ship between two ports, when weather and ocean currents are considered. Consequently, there is a considerable need for and potential benefits from decision support systems in ship planning processes. Optimization-based decision support systems for transportation routing and scheduling have been widely discussed in the literature ; however, relatively few contributions exist for ship routing and scheduling problems. There has been little or no use of advanced optimisation software in planning of fleet schedules in maritime transportation. Optimisation software implemented on a computer can be of assistance in decision support but tend to have restricted ability to handle all practical constraints that occur in real life. The objective of this paper is to present some of the trends that may influence future developments and the use of optimization-based decision support systems for ship routing and scheduling. Several of the trends indicate both accelerating needs and benefits from such systems.