Gantry crane and shuttle car scheduling in modern rail–rail transshipment yards

Stefan Fedtke () and Nils Boysen ()
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Stefan Fedtke: Lehrstuhl für Operations Management
Nils Boysen: Lehrstuhl für Operations Management

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, 2017, vol. 39, issue 2, No 5, 473-503

Abstract: Abstract Modern rail–rail transshipment yards serve as hub nodes in railway networks and enable a rapid consolidation of containers among freight trains. The container transshipment is executed by parallel gantry cranes supported by a sorting system, where shuttle cars preposition containers to relieve the cranes from excessive movement along the spread of the yard. An important decision problem in this context is the scheduling of the gantry cranes, which is considerably complicated by the need to synchronize cranes and shuttle cars whenever container moves are executed via the sorting system. We formalize the resulting interdependent crane and shuttle car scheduling problem, introduce suited solution algorithms, and apply them in order to explore important managerial aspects. Our main findings in this regard are that the position of the sorter either in the middle of the tracks or at the outside has negligible impact on yard performance, while it is a challenging task to match the number of cranes with an appropriate fleet size of shuttles.

Keywords: Container logistics; Railway terminals; Crane scheduling; Multiple traveling salesman problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s00291-016-0461-z

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