Shunting Minimal Rail Car Allocation

Authors:
Marco E. Lübbecke;Uwe T. Zimmermann
Affiliations:
Institut für Mathematik, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany D-10623;Institute of Mathematical Optimization, Braunschweig University of Technology, Braunschweig, Germany D-38106
Venue:
Computational Optimization and Applications
Year:
2005

Citing 8
Cited 0

Some optimal inapproximability results

STOC '97 Proceedings of the twenty-ninth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
The train marshalling problem

Discrete Applied Mathematics
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness

Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness
Improved Empty Freight Car Distribution

Transportation Science
Constructing Railroad Blocking Plans to Minimize Handling Costs

Transportation Science
A Tactical Decision Support System for Empty Railcar Management

Transportation Science
Railroad Blocking: A Network Design Application

Operations Research
Engine Routing and Scheduling at Industrial In-Plant Railroads

Transportation Science

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We consider the rail car management at industrial in-plant railroads. Demands for loaded or empty cars are characterized by a track, a car type, and the desired quantity. If available, we assign cars from the stock, possibly substituting types, otherwise we rent additional cars. Transportation requests are fulfilled as a short sequence of pieces of work, the so-called blocks. Their design at a minimal total transportation cost is the planning task considered in this paper. It decomposes into the rough distribution of cars among regions, and the NP-hard shunting minimal allocation of cars per region. We present mixed integer programming formulations for the two problem levels. Our computational experience from practical data encourages an installation in practice.