A new multi-objective model to optimise rail transport scheduler


Autoria(s): Masoud, Mahmoud; Kent, Geoff; Kozan, Erhan; Liu, Shi Qiang
Data(s)

25/02/2016

Resumo

The sugarcane transport system plays a critical role in the overall performance of Australia’s sugarcane industry. An inefficient sugarcane transport system interrupts the raw sugarcane harvesting process, delays the delivery of sugarcane to the mill, deteriorates the sugar quality, increases the usage of empty bins, and leads to the additional sugarcane production costs. Due to these negative effects, there is an urgent need for an efficient sugarcane transport schedule that should be developed by the rail schedulers. In this study, a multi-objective model using mixed integer programming (MIP) is developed to produce an industry-oriented scheduling optimiser for sugarcane rail transport system. The exact MIP solver (IBM ILOG-CPLEX) is applied to minimise the makespan and the total operating time as multi-objective functions. Moreover, the so-called Siding neighbourhood search (SNS) algorithm is developed and integrated with Sidings Satisfaction Priorities (SSP) and Rail Conflict Elimination (RCE) algorithms to solve the problem in a more efficient way. In implementation, the sugarcane transport system of Kalamia Sugar Mill that is a coastal locality about 1050 km northwest of Brisbane city is investigated as a real case study. Computational experiments indicate that high-quality solutions are obtainable in industry-scale applications.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/93285/

Publicador

Scientific Research Publishing, Inc.

Relação

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/93285/1/JTTs.pdf

DOI:10.4236/jtts.2016.62008

Masoud, Mahmoud, Kent, Geoff, Kozan, Erhan, & Liu, Shi Qiang (2016) A new multi-objective model to optimise rail transport scheduler. Journal of Transportation Technologies, 6(2), pp. 86-98.

Direitos

Copyright 2016 The Author(s)

Fonte

Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities; School of Mathematical Sciences; Science & Engineering Faculty; Mathematical Sciences

Tipo

Journal Article