Improvement of Planning Methods for Freight Rail Transportation to Seaport Terminals

Abstract

Nowadays Russian railways make centralized decision about month loading plan for regional railroads in terms of cargo types, destination, types of rolling-stock subject to customers' orders. To implement centralized plan for a month regional railroads make local decision about daily loading. Such a plan should meet conditions of different nature: customers' needs, technological and season terms, and others. However, such a policy could lead to non-uniform delivery to a seaport. As a result it brings penalties if capacity of the port is not enough to elaborate cargo delivered. This research introduces improvements for centralized freight railroad transportation planning methods in the direction of port terminals. Theoretical result of the research is a method, based on a linear programming model. The method allows constructing such loading plan for railroad shipment to a seaport as to minimize penalties for cargo, which exceeds daily capacity of the seaport. Practical result corresponds to implementation of the method in the case of Russian railways.