Analysis of the location problem of emergency attendance teams for a railroad through optimization

Abstract

Rail operators worldwide are seeing an increase in demand for services, driven by expanding global trade and the use of export commodities. Punctual service in a train stopped on the railroad is extremely important since the delay in service significantly impacts performance, asset utilization, and railroad productivity. The present work addresses the development and the solution of an optimization model for locating railway service teams that serve locomotives that need emergency maintenance on a Brazilian railway. Additionally, a hypercube model was solved to estimate several performance measures that assist in decision‐making. From the result analysis of different scenarios, it was found that the optimized maintenance teams' location provides superior results to the current ones considering the same resources. Also, it was possible to increase the coverage with double attendance in the studied system, monitoring different indicators such as attendance teams' average system travel time and workload.

Discrete cooperative coverage location models with alternative facility types in a probabilistic setting

“…The papers by Cardei et al (2006), Plastria and Carrizosa (1999), Suzuki and Drezner (2003), Yang et al (2006), andBerman et al (2009) are typical examples of such approaches. More recently, Troian et al (2023) proposed a double coverage model for the location of attendance teams along railway lines and developed a hypercube algorithm for its solution.…”

“…More recently, Troian et al. (2023) proposed a double coverage model for the location of attendance teams along railway lines and developed a hypercube algorithm for its solution.…”