The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Operational decision · 2009–2010
Petrobras routes oil-rig crews by helicopter with optimization
Petrobras optimized helicopter routing to 80 platforms, cutting flight costs 14% and saving $20M a year.
Petrobras
the move
Petrobras transports roughly 1,900 employees a day between about 80 offshore platforms and four mainland bases, using more than 40 helicopters of different capacity, cost and performance.
Each day flight planners chose helicopter routes and schedules to meet passenger demand. The team modeled the problem as a large mixed-integer program generalizing earlier helicopter routing models, solved by column generation, plus a network-flow model to assign passengers optimally to chosen routes.
The system now generates optimized flight plans in under an hour that meet operational guidelines and improve safety while minimizing operating costs.
why it works
- Helicopter routing and crew-to-route assignment were solved as one problem, so neither was sacrificed.
- Column generation handled a problem too large to solve directly.
- Safety guidelines were hard constraints, not a trade-off against cost.
- Fast solve times let planners re-optimize daily as demands changed.
what transfers
When the asset is scarce and the assignment is interdependent, solving routing and passenger assignment together fixes what local rules cannot.
what came after
Petrobras cut its number of offshore landings by 18%, total flight time by 8%, and flight costs by 14%, for annual savings of more than $20 million. The work became a 2009 Daniel H. Wagner Prize finalist.
references
- Optimizing Helicopter Transport of Oil Rig Crews at Petrobras
- Optimizing Helicopter Transport of Oil Rig Crews at Petrobras (PDF)
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