BOptimum™ is the first comprehensive commercial bunker refueling and on board inventory management system in the marine industry.

A Linear Programming optimization model built in the Mosel language and uses the Xpress-MP optimization engine.

Decision Variables:
The model's decision variables are the quantities of the different fuel-types purchased and loaded into each of tanks on the vessel, ports and prices.

Objective Function:
The objective function seeks to minimize the sum total of the fuel prices and barging costs associated with the purchase quantities. Barging costs applied are of a discontinuous nature depending on the quantity, and consist both a fixed and variable component. Mathematically, if P represents fuel prices and B barging costs:

Constraints:
The following constraints apply to EACH port on the voyage and EACH fuel type.
» Minimum and Maximum arrival amount.
» Minimum and Maximum departure amount.
» Maximum refueling quantity: this is a function of the available refueling time and pumping rate in a port.
» Minimum refueling quantity: this amount typically stems from any contractual arrangements and is only applied if the model opts to refuel in a particular port.

The following constraints pertain to each of the ship's tanks.
» Maximum tank capacity.
» Allowable Co-mingling percent: this is the maximum amount of 'old' fuel allowed in a given tank when the model decides to purchase/load at a given port.
» Inventory or quantity balance; meaning that the amount of fuel at the end of a port-pair must be equal to the inventory at the starting port of this pair plus purchases, minus consumption.

The final constraint requires that the vessel have a total amount of fuel on board to complete each port-pair of the voyage and finish the entire trip.

The model optimizes the purchase of fuel for a marine vessel with several fuel tanks which contain one of 3 types of fuel.

It assists: Vessel officers, Operators, bunker buyers, and their  brokers to optimize their refueling planning and analysis via a collaborative platform as a vessel trades through various ports in its future deployment .The end result is a recommendation of refueling at the optimum port, quantity, price and date.

A special reporting package called bIntouch and bAlert give all stakeholders in the company’s bunker supply chain an opportunity to leverage any internal and external information that changes and could have impact on the company's fuel refueling plans and strategy.

It has its own distance table, schedule developer with calendar, voyage speed and consumption monitor and tank layout for viewing and calculation convenience. An extensive port (> 1000) and price (125) database is fully integrated with current and historic prices and port information.