Efficient decomposition-based algorithm to solve long-term pipeline scheduling problem

This paper addresses the scheduling and inventory management of a straight pipeline system connecting a single refinery to multiple distribution centers.By increasing the number of batches and time periods,maintaining the model resolution by using linear programming-based methods and commercial solvers would be very time-consuming.In this paper,we make an attempt to utilize the problem structure and develop a decomposition-based algorithm capable of finding near-optimal solutions for large instances in a reasonable time.The algorithm starts with a relaxed version of the model and adds a family of cuts on the fly,so that a near-optimal solution is obtained within a few iterations.The idea behind the cut generation is based on the knowledge of the underlying problem structure.Computational experiments on a real-world data case and some randomly generated instances confirm the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in terms of the solution quality and time.