Modeling and optimization of plans for railway freight transport performed by a transport operator

Abstract

This paper offers an approach for solving a problem that arises for railway transport operators. The task is to manage the fleet of freight railcars optimally in terms of profit maximization. The source data for the transport operator is a list of requests received from customers, as well as the location of railcars at the beginning of the planning period. The request formed by each customer consists of departure station, destination station, name and volume of cargo that the customer would like to transport. The request also contains the rate that the customer has to pay to the transport operator for each loaded wagon transported. Planning is carried out for a month in advance and consists, on the one hand, in selecting the most profitable requests for execution, on the other hand – in building a sequence of cargo and empty runs that will fulfill the selected requests with the greatest efficiency. Direct transportation of loaded and empty railway cars is carried out by Russian Railways with preknown tariffs and time standards for each of the routes. At the same time, tariffs for driving loaded wagons are additional costs for the customer of the route specified in the request (customers pay both the transport operator for the use of wagons and Russian Railways); transportation of empty wagons is paid by transport operators. To solve this problem, one of the possible ways to reduce it to a largedimensional linear programming problem is proposed. An algorithm is proposed, the result of which is a problem written in the format of a linear programming problem. To demonstrate the approach clearly, a simplified problem statement is considered that takes into account only the main factors of the modeled process. The paper also shows an example of a numerical solution of the problem based on simple model data. MODELING OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS