Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.46, No.17, 5659-5672, 2007
Reactive scheduling framework for a multiproduct pipeline with inventory management
Real world scenarios on the planning and scheduling of the complex oil supply chain represent challenging problems. However, there is a growing need to establish decision support tools capable of dealing with competition within this industry so as to replace simple procedures, such as spreadsheets, with more efficient tools. This work studies a medium term scheduling problem of a pipeline and associated end- of- pipe tank farm. The mixed integer linear problem (MILP) formulation proposed by Relvas et al. [Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2006, 45, 7841- 7855] is improved. This model represents the articulation between the pipeline schedule and the inventory management at the tank farm. The improvements include variable flowrate, pipeline stoppages, and variable settling period with product. On this scheduling model, a novel rescheduling methodology is developed, taking into account the variability of real plant changes with the definition of revisions of schedules in an effective way. The model and respective rescheduling strategy are applied to a scenario of a Portuguese oil distribution company. Problems covering 1 month of time horizon, including initial plans and their revisions, with more than one perturbation, have been successfully solved.