Scheduling rail freight node operations through a slot allocation approach release_2ltffvxhcjbrnmlzbzv4lpx6oa

by René Schönemann, Technische Universität Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Jürgen Siegmann

Published by Technische Universität Berlin.

2016  

Abstract

The present thesis examines the performance of complex freight handling nodes with a focus on the transshipment from and to rail. Complex freight nodes can be found for example in major seaports or industrial railways of large industrial plants. When investigating the railway-specific processes of freight hubs, it has been particularly noticed that they practice an improvised rather than a scheduled operations policy, also known as timetable-free scheduling. That means that the necessary cargo handling process steps are performed rather spontaneous and without much planning efforts. The inadequate organisation of railway operations also leads to significant inefficiencies in the cargo handling capacity. This thesis is motivated by the aspiration of increasing the productivity and thus the throughput capacity of goods, wagons and trains through complex freight nodes as an overall system. The existing shortcomings shall be resolved by means of a robust hub scheduling approach which synchronises the work processes in freight yards with the preceding and succeeding links in the transport chain. By replacing the timetable-free operations in the railway yard with a process-oriented coordination mechanism based on a time windows (slot management) strategy, the railway-specific requirements shall be integrated with customer's and logistics demands. Initially, the rail-specific production processes of freight nodes are elaborated in a process analysis. It examines the properties of various terminal types, the cargo handling techniques, and the process sequences that freight trains, which pass through the hubs, are involved in. In the process analysis it is pointed out that due to the large number of actors involved in complex hubs and due to the lack of a superior coordinator, it is expected that there is a significant potential for increasing the efficiency of such nodes due to new dispatching strategies. A two-step simulation and optimisation model approach is developed to investigate the productivity of the cargo tr [...]
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