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Santa Fe Railway Uses an Operating-Plan Model to Improve Its Service Design

Author

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  • Michael F. Gorman

    (Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, 3017 Lou Menk Drive, Fort Worth, Texas 76131)

Abstract

Santa Fe Railway's intermodal business unit has developed an innovative approach to designing its service offerings. The operating-plan model (OPM) minimizes the schedule-related costs of service subject to rail-operating capabilities while meeting customers' expectations for service. The algorithm produces a weekly train timetable and assigns traffic to trains. Because of the problem's size and complexity, a combination of genetic and tabu searches is used to search for successively better operating plans. The OPM shows the potential to improve global service by four percent while reducing costs by six percent over the existing operating plan. Santa Fe Intermodal has realized savings by applying the OPM to more narrowly focused problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael F. Gorman, 1998. "Santa Fe Railway Uses an Operating-Plan Model to Improve Its Service Design," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 28(4), pages 1-12, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:28:y:1998:i:4:p:1-12
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.28.4.1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mark H. Keaton, 1992. "Designing Railroad Operating Plans: A Dual Adjustment Method for Implementing Lagrangian Relaxation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 263-279, November.
    2. Arjang A. Assad, 1982. "A Class of Train-Scheduling Problems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 281-310, August.
    3. Haghani, Ali E., 1989. "Formulation and solution of a combined train routing and makeup, and empty car distribution model," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 433-452, December.
    4. Michael Francis Gorman, 1998. "An application of genetic and tabu searches to the freight railroad operating plan problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 78(0), pages 51-69, January.
    5. Keaton, Mark H., 1989. "Designing optimal railroad operating plans: Lagrangian relaxation and heuristic approaches," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 415-431, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Phil Ireland & Rod Case & John Fallis & Carl Van Dyke & Jason Kuehn & Marc Meketon, 2004. "The Canadian Pacific Railway Transforms Operations by Using Models to Develop Its Operating Plans," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 34(1), pages 5-14, February.
    2. Blum, Jeremy & Eskandarian, Azim, 2002. "Enhancing intelligent agent collaboration for flow optimization of railroad traffic," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 919-930, December.
    3. Arnt-Gunnar Lium & Teodor Gabriel Crainic & Stein W. Wallace, 2009. "A Study of Demand Stochasticity in Service Network Design," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 144-157, May.
    4. Crainic, Teodor Gabriel, 2000. "Service network design in freight transportation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 272-288, April.
    5. Li Li & Sridhar Tayur, 2005. "Medium-Term Pricing and Operations Planning in Intermodal Transportation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 73-86, February.

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