Background and challenge:
One of the world’s largest mining companies transports ore from several mines spread over a geographical territory of 60+ miles that needs to be brought to the port. The rail network moving this ore became a bottleneck in the company’s supply chain network, and the company needed a way to increase the network’s efficiency and capacity.
Historically, the scheduling of these trains had been done manually. Scheduling about 60 trains daily running in multiple directions on a 200-mile-long network with varying track types and maintenance events taking place in different time periods, it creates an extraordinarily complex decision problem.
Solution:
To tackle this challenge, Optym worked closely with the business to learn user expectations and gather business requirements. From this, Optym devised a real-time train scheduling system leveraging optimization techniques with the first phase of the system going live within one year followed by three-month release cycles for new features. This system utilized real-time data feeds to automate train scheduling decisions, optimizing train movements and facility utilization. By applying Optym's expertise in optimization, we designed a solution tailored to the complex rail network, introducing automation and efficiency into operations.
The train scheduling solution displayed various tables, charts, and an electronic train graph (ETG). The ETG presents the schedules of all trains from the current time to several days into the future in an intuitive manner. Users are able to interact with the ETG and add data related to train dwell, maintenance events, speed restrictions, switch clamps, crew changeover, etc.
Results:
Through several studies we have shown that the system-generated train schedules are superior to the manually generated train schedules and have lower cycle times. This system is resulting in more efficient use of rail infrastructure and increased throughput.
See for yourself