The Short-term Car Flow Planning Model in Rail Freight Company – Case Study

With the promotion of the environmentally friendly transportation modes (the European Commission supports the freight transport operations in the rail sector), an increase in the diversification of the demand is observed. While most rail freight companies tend to apply fixed schedules, this approach is not effective turns out to be ineffective due to the need to meet the customer's specific requirements.The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of empty wagon flow planning over a medium term horizon and to discuss the opportunities of improvement of this plans by discrete optimization. In order to increase the utilization and availability of wagons, the planning procedure with a rolling horizon has to be implemented. Unfortunately, since the plan has to be updated ca. every 4 hours, this planning approach needs effective optimization tools. Our hybrid two-stage approach is designed to be implemented in such business environment. This formulation allows us to solve real life instances even for a 7-day time horizon.