Maritime inventory routing problem with multiple time windows

This paper considers a maritime inventory routing problem with multiple time windows. The typical time windows considered that certain ports permit ships entering and leaving during the daytime only due to various operational limitations. We have developed an exact algorithm to represent this problem. However, due to the excessive computational time required for solving the model, we have proposed a multi-heuristics based genetic algorithm. The multi-heuristics are composed of a set of strategies that correspond to four decision points: ship selection, ship routing, the product type and the quantity of loading and unloading products. The experimental results show that the multi-heuristics can obtain acceptable solutions within a reasonable computational time. Moreover, the flexibility to add or remove the strategies means that the proposed method would not be difficult to implement for other variants of the maritime inventory routing problem.