IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/orinte/v41y2011i2p109-122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimizing Railway Crew Scheduling at DB Schenker

Author

Listed:
  • Silke Jütte

    (Department of Supply Chain Management and Management Science, University of Cologne, D-50923 Cologne, Germany)

  • Marc Albers

    (Department of Supply Chain Management and Management Science, University of Cologne, D-50923 Cologne, Germany)

  • Ulrich W. Thonemann

    (Department of Supply Chain Management and Management Science, University of Cologne, D-50923 Cologne, Germany)

  • Knut Haase

    (Department of Transport Economics, University of Hamburg, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany)

Abstract

Freight railway crew scheduling consists of generating crew duties for operating trains on a schedule at minimal cost while meeting all work regulations and operational requirements. Typically, a freight railway operation uses thousands of trains and requires thousands of crew members to operate them. Because of the problem's large size, even moderate percentage savings in crew costs translate into large monetary savings. However, freight railway operations are complex, and a crew-scheduling problem is difficult to solve. We describe the development and implementation of crew-scheduling software at DB Schenker, the largest European railway freight carrier. The software is based on a column-generation solution technique. Computational results demonstrate that high-quality solutions can be obtained using reasonable run times, even for large problem instances. We implemented all of DB Schenker's major requirements to ensure that the software is operationally viable. Management also uses this software as a decision support tool for strategic planning.

Suggested Citation

  • Silke Jütte & Marc Albers & Ulrich W. Thonemann & Knut Haase, 2011. "Optimizing Railway Crew Scheduling at DB Schenker," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 109-122, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:2:p:109-122
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1100.0549
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.1100.0549
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/inte.1100.0549?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Balaji Gopalakrishnan & Ellis. Johnson, 2005. "Airline Crew Scheduling: State-of-the-Art," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 140(1), pages 305-337, November.
    2. Richard Freling & Ramon Lentink & Albert Wagelmans, 2004. "A Decision Support System for Crew Planning in Passenger Transportation Using a Flexible Branch-and-Price Algorithm," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 203-222, March.
    3. Marco E. Lübbecke & Jacques Desrosiers, 2005. "Selected Topics in Column Generation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 1007-1023, December.
    4. A.T. Ernst & H. Jiang & M. Krishnamoorthy & H. Nott & D. Sier, 2001. "An Integrated Optimization Model for Train Crew Management," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 108(1), pages 211-224, November.
    5. Andrew J. Schaefer & Ellis L. Johnson & Anton J. Kleywegt & George L. Nemhauser, 2005. "Airline Crew Scheduling Under Uncertainty," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 340-348, August.
    6. François Vanderbeck, 2000. "On Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition in Integer Programming and ways to Perform Branching in a Branch-and-Price Algorithm," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(1), pages 111-128, February.
    7. Desrochers, Martin & Soumis, Francois, 1988. "A reoptimization algorithm for the shortest path problem with time windows," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 242-254, May.
    8. Michel Gamache & François Soumis & Gérald Marquis & Jacques Desrosiers, 1999. "A Column Generation Approach for Large-Scale Aircrew Rostering Problems," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 247-263, April.
    9. Cynthia Barnhart & Ellis L. Johnson & George L. Nemhauser & Martin W. P. Savelsbergh & Pamela H. Vance, 1998. "Branch-and-Price: Column Generation for Solving Huge Integer Programs," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 46(3), pages 316-329, June.
    10. Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Yvan Dumas & Marius M. Solomon & François Soumis, 1997. "Daily Aircraft Routing and Scheduling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(6), pages 841-855, June.
    11. Erwin Abbink & Matteo Fischetti & Leo Kroon & Gerrit Timmer & Michiel Vromans, 2005. "Reinventing Crew Scheduling at Netherlands Railways," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 35(5), pages 393-401, October.
    12. Stefan Irnich & Guy Desaulniers, 2005. "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," Springer Books, in: Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Marius M. Solomon (ed.), Column Generation, chapter 0, pages 33-65, Springer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Suyabatmaz, Ali Çetin & Şahin, Güvenç, 2015. "Railway crew capacity planning problem with connectivity of schedules," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 88-100.
    2. Neufeld, Janis S. & Scheffler, Martin & Tamke, Felix & Hoffmann, Kirsten & Buscher, Udo, 2021. "An efficient column generation approach for practical railway crew scheduling with attendance rates," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(3), pages 1113-1130.
    3. Fei Peng & Xian Fan & Puxin Wang & Mingan Sheng, 2022. "A Time-Space Network-Based Optimization Method for Scheduling Depot Drivers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-19, November.
    4. Guo, Jia & Bard, Jonathan F., 2024. "Weekly scheduling for freight rail engineers & trainmen," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    5. Lukas Bach & Twan Dollevoet & Dennis Huisman, 2016. "Integrating Timetabling and Crew Scheduling at a Freight Railway Operator," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 878-891, August.
    6. Jorge Amaya & Paula Uribe, 2018. "A model and computational tool for crew scheduling in train transportation of mine materials by using a local search strategy," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 26(3), pages 383-402, October.
    7. Silke Jütte & Daniel Müller & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2017. "Optimizing railway crew schedules with fairness preferences," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 43-55, February.
    8. Fuentes, Manuel & Cadarso, Luis & Marín, Ángel, 2019. "A hybrid model for crew scheduling in rail rapid transit networks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 248-265.
    9. Michael F. Gorman & John-Paul Clarke & Amir Hossein Gharehgozli & Michael Hewitt & René de Koster & Debjit Roy, 2014. "State of the Practice: A Review of the Application of OR/MS in Freight Transportation," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 44(6), pages 535-554, December.
    10. Lusby, Richard M. & Larsen, Jesper & Bull, Simon, 2018. "A survey on robustness in railway planning," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 1-15.
    11. Heil, Julia & Hoffmann, Kirsten & Buscher, Udo, 2020. "Railway crew scheduling: Models, methods and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 405-425.
    12. Christian Rählmann & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2020. "Railway crew scheduling with semi-flexible timetables," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 42(4), pages 835-862, December.
    13. Scheffler, Martin & Neufeld, Janis S. & Hölscher, Michael, 2020. "An MIP-based heuristic solution approach for the locomotive assignment problem focussing on (dis-)connecting processes," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 64-80.
    14. Brian Roth & Anantaram Balakrishnan & Pooja Dewan & April Kuo & Dasaradh Mallampati & Juan Morales, 2018. "Crew Decision Assist: System for Optimizing Crew Assignments at BNSF Railway," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 48(5), pages 436-448, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jütte, Silke & Thonemann, Ulrich W., 2012. "Divide-and-price: A decomposition algorithm for solving large railway crew scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(2), pages 214-223.
    2. Breugem, T. & Dollevoet, T.A.B. & Huisman, D., 2017. "Is Equality always desirable?," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI2017-30, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    3. Kirsten Hoffmann & Udo Buscher & Janis Sebastian Neufeld & Felix Tamke, 2017. "Solving Practical Railway Crew Scheduling Problems with Attendance Rates," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 59(3), pages 147-159, June.
    4. Thomas Breugem & Twan Dollevoet & Dennis Huisman, 2022. "Is Equality Always Desirable? Analyzing the Trade-Off Between Fairness and Attractiveness in Crew Rostering," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2619-2641, April.
    5. Heil, Julia & Hoffmann, Kirsten & Buscher, Udo, 2020. "Railway crew scheduling: Models, methods and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(2), pages 405-425.
    6. Luciano Costa & Claudio Contardo & Guy Desaulniers, 2019. "Exact Branch-Price-and-Cut Algorithms for Vehicle Routing," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(4), pages 946-985, July.
    7. Paul A. Chircop & Timothy J. Surendonk & Menkes H. L. van den Briel & Toby Walsh, 2022. "On routing and scheduling a fleet of resource-constrained vessels to provide ongoing continuous patrol coverage," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 312(2), pages 723-760, May.
    8. Abdelouahab Zaghrouti & Issmail El Hallaoui & François Soumis, 2020. "Improving set partitioning problem solutions by zooming around an improving direction," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 284(2), pages 645-671, January.
    9. Stefan Irnich & Guy Desaulniers & Jacques Desrosiers & Ahmed Hadjar, 2010. "Path-Reduced Costs for Eliminating Arcs in Routing and Scheduling," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 297-313, May.
    10. Marco E. Lübbecke & Jacques Desrosiers, 2005. "Selected Topics in Column Generation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 53(6), pages 1007-1023, December.
    11. Mohammed Saddoune & Guy Desaulniers & Issmail Elhallaoui & François Soumis, 2012. "Integrated Airline Crew Pairing and Crew Assignment by Dynamic Constraint Aggregation," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(1), pages 39-55, February.
    12. Bouarab, Hocine & El Hallaoui, Issmail & Metrane, Abdelmoutalib & Soumis, François, 2017. "Dynamic constraint and variable aggregation in column generation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 262(3), pages 835-850.
    13. Okan Örsan Özener & Melda Örmeci Matoğlu & Güneş Erdoğan & Mohamed Haouari & Hasan Sözer, 2017. "Solving a large-scale integrated fleet assignment and crew pairing problem," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 253(1), pages 477-500, June.
    14. Heykel Achour & Michel Gamache & François Soumis & Guy Desaulniers, 2007. "An Exact Solution Approach for the Preferential Bidding System Problem in the Airline Industry," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 354-365, August.
    15. Vahid Zeighami & François Soumis, 2019. "Combining Benders’ Decomposition and Column Generation for Integrated Crew Pairing and Personalized Crew Assignment Problems," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(5), pages 1479-1499, September.
    16. Jesica Armas & Luis Cadarso & Angel A. Juan & Javier Faulin, 2017. "A multi-start randomized heuristic for real-life crew rostering problems in airlines with work-balancing goals," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 258(2), pages 825-848, November.
    17. Fuentes, Manuel & Cadarso, Luis & Marín, Ángel, 2019. "A hybrid model for crew scheduling in rail rapid transit networks," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 248-265.
    18. Mohamed Haouari & Farah Zeghal Mansour & Hanif D. Sherali, 2019. "A New Compact Formulation for the Daily Crew Pairing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(3), pages 811-828, May.
    19. Silke Jütte & Daniel Müller & Ulrich W. Thonemann, 2017. "Optimizing railway crew schedules with fairness preferences," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 43-55, February.
    20. Iman Dayarian & Guy Desaulniers, 2019. "A Branch-Price-and-Cut Algorithm for a Production-Routing Problem with Short-Life-Span Products," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(3), pages 829-849, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:41:y:2011:i:2:p:109-122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.