A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering School of Engineering and Technology

Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1982

Many single criterion transportation models have been formulated in order to solve fleet assignment problems. But in certain practical situation two or more objectives are preferable. For example in assigning a fleet of sea bulk carriers to fulfill an agreement of transportation of certain amount of cargo from supplying ports to receiving ports a shipowner, having more than sufficient carrying capacity, may not only be interested in minimizing cost of transportation but may also want to get his tonnage carrying capacity be made available as soon and as much as possible to capture some other lucrative demands. That is, he may be interested in minimizing tonnage-days as well. This work deals with transportation of non-perishable single bulk commodity (specifically coal/ore transportation from Australia to some oversea ports in the pacific basin). The proposed model treats complicacy that arise with the fleet consisting of ships differing widely in dimensional characteristics. The solution to the problem consists of a set of pareto optimal plan (combination of minimum cost and minimum tonnage-days utilized) which can effectively help shipowners in decision making. Several programs were run using a minimax approach to the bicriterion transportation model in IBM computer 3031. MIP package was used with real data of 5 supply ports, 5 demand ports and 8 vessels and satisfactory results were obtained. The model was found to be efficient in respect of computer time as well.