Determination of operating policies for a barge transportation system through simulation and optimization modeling

This paper presents a simulation model of a barge transportation system for petroleum delivery within an inland waterway. The simulation is employed as an evaluation model within a decision support system which also includes a criterion model, represented as a decision maker's utility function, and an optimization procedure which employs scatter search. Variance reduction techniques are also employed in order to improve the accuracy of the estimates of the performance measures associated with the system. The main purpose of the system is to determine values for important inventory policy variables.