A math-heuristic approach for integrated resource scheduling in a maritime logistics facility

This paper addresses a real-world integrated logistics problem involving the servicing of vessels in a maritime logistics facility. It can be modeled as a job shop problem in which the operations of a job require not only a single machine, but also a set of equipment to be processed plus a large number of side constraints. We decompose the problem into a machine scheduling problem and an equipment allocation problem. The former sub-problem is solved heuristically that prune the solution space for the latter equipment allocation problem, which is solved by an exact mathematical model. We run this math-heuristic approach on a set of real industrial test cases and benchmark the results against a conventional heuristic approach.