Optimizing production schedules in classification yards

Abstract

Classification yards play an important role in railroad networks for operating single wagonload transportation. Here, inbound trains are disassembled, the rail cars are sorted and then assembled to form outbound trains. The efficient and resource-conserving operation of shunting yards has a profound impact on the quality and profitability of single wagonload rail freight services. Preparing production schedules for classification yards that ensure punctuality and efficiency is a challenging task that becomes even harder with the specification of customer-oriented, digital supported transportation plans for each wagon.
Against this background we introduce a decision support approach that helps yard managers to find optimal schedules for the resource allocation in the yard. The main component is an optimization approach that involves time constraints and capacity restrictions as well as an objective function that represents goals depending on planning level. At the strategic level of planning, these goals are determined by the utilization of resources (e.g. engines, staff, tracks). However, during the operation, including ad-hoc disturbances, it is useful to minimize the loss of quality instead (e.g. tardiness, missing connections). Besides the mathematical formulation of the problem we discuss solution methods, introduce an optimization framework and outline computational results that show the economical potential.
Furthermore, we discuss the opportunities of real-time control and outline the path towards fully automated classification yards. With this work we support the transforming process of the railway freight transport system to meet the prospective challenges in the digital era.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• https://zenodo.org/record/1483764 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• https://zenodo.org/record/1483764,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1483763 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

• https://zenodo.org/record/1483764,

http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1483764 under the license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

DOIS: 10.5281/zenodo.1483764 10.5281/zenodo.1483763