Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2016
Abstract
The Noble Group is a market-leading global supply chain manager of agricultural products, metals, and minerals, operating in more than 140 locations. This paper focuses on Noble’s maritime operations in Indonesia, where coal is transported from mines to ocean-bound vessels via roads and rivers. Currently, transportation delays are causing Noble to lose tens of millions of dollars per year in demurrage and detention penalties. Although the company can hire additional resources (such as barges and floating cranes) in advance to minimize the impact of delays, the economic benefit of doing so is often unclear. To reduce or eliminate these delays, we develop a modeling framework and decision support system to facilitate the planning and management of Noble’s transshipment operations. The system utilizes fast search algorithms that deliver efficient schedules, minimizing the cost of delays and additional resources required, and resulting in monthly savings exceeding $1 million.
Keywords
scheduling, maritime, transshipment operations, decision support system, heuristics, decomposition
Discipline
Operations and Supply Chain Management
Research Areas
Operations Management
Publication
INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics
Volume
46
Issue
3
First Page
203
Last Page
217
ISSN
2644-0865
Identifier
10.1287/inte.2015.0841
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences
Citation
FRAGKOS I. and REYCK, Bert De.
Improving the maritime transshipment operations at the Noble Group. (2016). INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics. 46, (3), 203-217.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7646
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.2015.0841
