Maritime inventory routing with an application to fish feed distribution
This paper studies a maritime inventory routing problem (MIRP) faced by fish feed suppliers responsible for distributing different types of fish feed from one or several production facilities to a number of fish farms located at sea with a given heterogeneous fleet of specialized vessels. The feed s...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Maritime Transport Research |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666822X25000115 |
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| Summary: | This paper studies a maritime inventory routing problem (MIRP) faced by fish feed suppliers responsible for distributing different types of fish feed from one or several production facilities to a number of fish farms located at sea with a given heterogeneous fleet of specialized vessels. The feed supplier needs to maintain sufficient inventory levels at the farms at all times while minimizing the distribution costs. We propose a discrete-time mixed-integer programming (MIP) model for the fish feed MIRP. Since a commercial MIP-solver can only solve small problem instances, we also propose a matheuristic for solving real-life instances. The matheuristic employs a memetic algorithm, a metaheuristic combining a genetic algorithm with local search to decide how to route the vessels, coupled with a linear program for assigning quantities along the vessel routes. We perform a computational study on a number of realistic test instances generated using data from one of Norway’s largest fish feed suppliers. We show that the matheuristic produces reasonable solutions where the commercial MIP-solver fails, and as such can provide valuable decision support. |
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| ISSN: | 2666-822X |