Management of supplies and movements of tank containers in chemical logistics

Abstract

Bulk shipping of chemicals occurs in huge volumes, and involves VLCC and a variety of multi-parcel chemical tankers. The former routinely transport crude oils worldwide, while the latter transport clean petrochemical products and other chemicals such as vegetable oils. However, there is another equally important segment of chemical logistics, called container shipping. A discussion covers an innovative, event-based, pull approach for the minimum-cost or the maximum-profit scheduling of the transport and cleaning of multi-product tank containers (loaded and empty); a novel linear programming formulation that successfully solves large, industrially relevant problems; the container management problem from the perspectives of three companies (a chemical company, a third- or fourth-party logistics, and a container company; problem description; and solution methodology. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Annual Meeting and Fall Showcase (Cincinnati, OH 10/30/2005-11/4/2005).