Optimization of Planning-Level Locomotive Scheduling at KNR and Development of Its Implementation Prototype Program

한국철도에서의 계획단계 동력차 스케줄링 최적화 및 전문가 지원시스템의 프로토타입 프로그램 개발에 관한 연구

As of July 1999, i,185 lomocotives(excluding metropolitan area electric locomotives) are in Korean National Railroad(KNR). With this limited number of resources assigning locomotives to each trains of timetable is very important in the entire railway management point of view because schedule can be regarded as goods in transportation industry. On a simple rail network, it is rather easier to assign proper locomotives to trains with the experience of operating experts and get optimal assignment solution. However, as the network is getting bigger and complicated, the number of trains and corresponding locomotives will be dramatically increased to rover all the demands required to service all of the trains in timetable. There will be also numerous operational constraints to be considered. Assigning proper locomotives to trains and building optimal cyclic rotations of locomotive routings will result in increasing efficiency of schedule and giving a guarantee of more profit. The purpose of this study is two fold: (1) we consider a planning-level locomotive scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing the wasting cost under various practical constraints and (2) development of implementation prototype program of its assigning result. Not like other countries, i.e. Canada, Sweden, Korean railroad operates on n daily schedule basis. The objective is to find optimal assignment of locomotives of different types to each trains, which minimize the wasting cost. This problem is defined on a planning stage and therefore, does not consider operational constraints such as maintenance and emergency cases. Due to the large scale of the problem size and complexity, we approach with heuristic methods and column generation to find optimal solution. The locomotive scheduling prototype consists of several modules including database, optimization engine and diagram generator. The optimization engine solves MIP model and provides an optimal locomotive schedule using specified optimization algorithms. A cyclic locomotive route diagram can be generated using this optimal schedule through the diagram generator.