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Engine Routing and Scheduling at Industrial In-Plant Railroads

Author

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  • Marco E. Lübbecke

    (Department of Mathematical Optimization, Braunschweig University of Technology, Pockelsstra ß e 14, D-38106 Braunschweig, Germany)

  • Uwe T. Zimmermann

    (Department of Mathematical Optimization, Braunschweig University of Technology, Pockelsstraße 14, D-38106 Braunschweig, Germany)

Abstract

In-plant railroad engine scheduling involves routing and scheduling decisions for a heterogeneous fleet of switching engines to serve a set of time-window- and capacity-constrained transportation requests. Despite an ever-increasing competition, the current planning is purely by pencil and paper. Our paper describes the mathematical and algorithmic developments for addressing in-plant railroad decision support for scheduling and routing. The problem discussed in our work is related to the multiple-vehicle pickup and delivery problem. Exploiting the structure of admissible schedules of our particular railroad situation, we introduce two formulations of the problem as mixed integer and set partitioning programs. We propose solving the linear programming relaxation of the set partition model by column generation. We focus on the pricing problem stated in the form of a constrained shortest path problem, which is NP complete in the strong sense. A new exact label correcting algorithm is developed that prunes the search space in a novel manner. Heuristically obtained integer solutions of a practical quality are proposed as well. All the claims are demonstrated by computational experiments on both artificial and real-life data. We discuss implementation details as well.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco E. Lübbecke & Uwe T. Zimmermann, 2003. "Engine Routing and Scheduling at Industrial In-Plant Railroads," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(2), pages 183-197, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:37:y:2003:i:2:p:183-197
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.37.2.183.15251
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Dumas, Yvan & Desrosiers, Jacques & Soumis, Francois, 1991. "The pickup and delivery problem with time windows," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 7-22, September.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Amy Cohn & Sarah Root & Alex Wang & Douglas Mohr, 2007. "Integration of the Load-Matching and Routing Problem with Equipment Balancing for Small Package Carriers," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 238-252, May.
    2. Rouillon, Stéphane & Desaulniers, Guy & Soumis, François, 2006. "An extended branch-and-bound method for locomotive assignment," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 404-423, June.
    3. Marco E. Lübbecke & Jacques Desrosiers, 2005. "Selected Topics in Column Generation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 1007-1023, December.
    4. Hartong, Mark & Goel, Rajni & Wijeskra, Deminda, 2010. "Secure Rail Interchange Routing," 51st Annual Transportation Research Forum, Arlington, Virginia, March 11-13, 2010 207461, Transportation Research Forum.
    5. Nils Boysen & Malte Fliedner & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2013. "A Survey on Container Processing in Railway Yards," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 312-329, August.
    6. Piu, F. & Prem Kumar, V. & Bierlaire, M. & Speranza, M.G., 2015. "Introducing a preliminary consists selection in the locomotive assignment problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 217-237.
    7. Prashant Premkumar & P. N. Ram Kumar, 2022. "Locomotive assignment problem: integrating the strategic, tactical and operational level aspects," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 315(2), pages 867-898, August.
    8. Xinan Yang & Hajem A. Daham, 2020. "A column generation-based decomposition and aggregation approach for combining orders in inland transportation of containers," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 42(1), pages 261-296, March.
    9. Lubbecke, Marco E., 2005. "Dual variable based fathoming in dynamic programs for column generation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 162(1), pages 122-125, April.
    10. Prashant Premkumar & P. N. Ram Kumar, 2019. "Literature Review of Locomotive Assignment Problem from Service Operations Perspective: The Case of Indian Railways," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 8(1), pages 74-86, January.
    11. Huang, Baobin & Tang, Lixin & Baldacci, Roberto & Wang, Gongshu & Sun, Defeng, 2023. "A metaheuristic algorithm for a locomotive routing problem arising in the steel industry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(1), pages 385-399.
    12. Chung, Ji-Won & Oh, Seog-Moon & Choi, In-Chan, 2009. "A hybrid genetic algorithm for train sequencing in the Korean railway," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 555-565, June.

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