Title: Planning the distribution of empty wagon batches from marshalling yards to meet mine loading demand

Authors: Hendrigo Venes; Rodrigo de Alvarenga Rosa; Leandro Colombi Resendo; Rodrigo Pirola Pestana

Addresses: Department of Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil ' Department of Environmental Engineering, Federal University of Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brazil ' Federal Institute of Espírito Santo, Serra, Brazil ' Vale S.A., Vitória, Brazil

Abstract: The daily management of empty wagons is one of the key factors to improve the railway network performance and to manage the railway facilities. The aim of this paper is to propose a mathematical model of mixed integer linear programming to manage the distribution of empty wagons from marshalling yards to meet the demand in iron ore mines, reducing the breaking up of trains in the marshalling and origin yards and minimising the travel time. Using real data from EFVM, an important Brazilian railway, it was possible to obtain the optimum solution with CPLEX at very low execution times. The results showed that CPLEX was able to reduce 40.42% of the trains breaking ups when compared to the plan proposed by the EFVM planners.

Keywords: railway operations; railway transportation; empty wagon distribution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2024.142615

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2024 Vol.49 No.3, pp.389 - 411

Received: 17 Oct 2021
Accepted: 02 Apr 2022
Published online: 12 Nov 2024 *

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