Cyclic solutions to a maritime inventory routing problem

An inventory routing problem occurs when a company manages inventories both at production sites and consumption sites while also being in charge of the transportation of goods. We consider a maritime inventory routing problem where inventories are located at ports and a single product is transported between these ports using a heterogeneous fleet of vessels. As opposed to standard research on such maritime inventory routing problems, a model is developed that produces cyclic plans that are repeatable. Such plans are more costly than plans found using standard non-cyclic models, but the latter suffer from end-of-horizon effects due to being over-optimistic and making myopic decisions in accordance with an objective of minimizing costs. •A new mathematical programming model for a maritime inventory routing problem.•Avoiding end-of-horizon effects by creating cyclic plans.•Non-cyclic solutions lead to infeasible continuations.