Precedence Constrained Routing and Helicopter Scheduling: Heuristic Design

Mobil Producing Nigeria has an offshore oil field consisting of approximately 45 platforms. Each day certain platforms must be visited to regulate flow rates and a number of people must be transported between specified pairs of platforms. All transport is performed by helicopter. Mobil wanted to find a route for each daily set of stops that satisfied all the requirements and minimized the total distance flown. We developed two heuristics that produce very good solutions to this problem. The first ignores the problem of helicopter capacity, and the second handles it explicitly. Mobil has cited two benefits of the optimization software: all routing requirements are satisfied, and a significant reduction of total daily flying time has been achieved.