Vessel routing problem under uncertainty of demand

Abstract

In this paper it is introduced an optimization to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) with uncertainty of demand. The focus is to minimize the transportation costs while satisfying all the given constraints of the problem. The demand uncertainty is solved by applying a distribution fitting to the historical demand data provided by a break-bulk sea shipping company; therefore this is a real world implementation of the VRP with uncertainty of demand. Various scenarios are generated, each with randomized demand from each port’s distribution. Keywords: Optimization, vehicle routing, demand uncertainty, distribution fitting