Hump yards play a critical role in the efficient movement of goods through the rail network. They are as important for a railroad as hubs are for airlines. As railroad volumes are increasing hump yards are also increasing, which is becoming a bottleneck resource causing detours of railcars. They are very expensive to build and to maintain, costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build and tens of millions of dollars to expand capacities. Thus, railroads want their yards to achieve the peak efficiency level possible.

Innovative Scheduling analyses a major hump yard in the U.S. to improve its productivity. Through extensive data analysis we identify the yard bottlenecks, and then perform a cause-effect analysis. We provide recommendations to improve the yard’s throughput and capacity. We also develop an optimization-guided simulation model to assess the impact of optimization methods in increasing yard capacity.

CSX hires Innovative Scheduling to perform various enhancements to the software product licensed by it: Innovative Locomotive Shop Router (ILSR). ILSR directs locomotives to shops due for their quarterly maintenance (90-day maintenance) just-in-time in a manner that each shop receives the number of locomotives consistent with the shop’s locomotive processing capacity. This project consists of performing several minor enhancements and the following major enhancements: while directing locomotives due for quarterly maintenance to shops, taking into account the locomotive requirements of all trains and the number of locomotives already present at these shops to avoid shop congestion.

A national less-than-truckload carrier performs a pilot project using the Truckline Network Planning System (TNPS) product. In this project, the LTL carrier compares the quality of the solutions generated by TNPS with those generated by competing software products in the market. Both the linehaul cost and the service quality are considered in the performance metric. TNPS is a clear winner in this competitive study and the carrier agrees to license TNPS.

In the second study, another national LTL carrier compares its loading plan with the loading plan generated by TNPS. This study shows that TNPS can reduce the linehaul planning cost by at least 5% compared to the current linehaul planning cost.

BNSF hires Innovative Scheduling to perform various enhancements to the two service design products licensed by it: Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer (IRBO) and Innovative Train Scheduling Optimizer (ITSO). The IRBO software product creates a railroad’s optimal blocking plan to minimize the railcar miles and intermediate handlings, while taking into account yards’ blocking and car handling capacities. The ITSO software product creates a railroad’s train schedule to minimize the train operating costs while carrying all blocks over the train network. These enhancements of IRBO and ITSO will increase the quality of the solutions generated by these products, reduce the running time, and add new functional capabilities to these systems.

Innovative Scheduling develops the Truckline Network Planning System (TNPS) for less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers. Using TNPS, linehaul planners for an LTL carrier can determine the optimal loading plan (how shipments are routed over the network), and the optimal load schedule (the number of loads made by day-of-week in different lanes and load departure times) that minimizes the linehaul cost and meets the desired service quality.

TNPS is a major technological advancement over the software packages currently in use at most LTL carriers in the sense that it takes into account the day-of-week effect, while determining the loading plan and the load schedule. TNPS uses the cutting-edge network optimization techniques to determine the optimal linehaul plan; it has user-friendly forms, reports, charts, and maps to perform an in-depth analysis of a linehaul plan before implementing it.

CSX Transportation engaged Innovative Scheduling to update its operating plan for the merchandise network. This project consisted of revising its current operating plan, known as One Plan, by taking into account the changes in traffic demands and traffic patterns in the past few years.

Innovative Scheduling also performed several studies related to yard rationalizations. We analyzed the impact of downgrading/closing several yards on system-wide cost and yard volumes, and recommended some yard closures. These studies also determined that when traffic volumes increased in future, which yards would then attract greater volumes. Our recommendations have been and are still being used by CSX.

CSX Transportation A US Class I railroad hires Innovative Scheduling to analyze various yard configurations for a large intermodal yard that is being built with state-of-the-art technology and incurring significant capital expenses. Innovative Scheduling developed IYSO that can simulate yard operations, determine yard productivity, and identify bottlenecks.

IYSO analyzed different operating plans and determined the block and train volumes that can be handled in the yard. It also analyzed various yard layouts, identified bottleneck operations, made changes to the layout to eliminate bottlenecks, and demonstrated that the suggested changes will increase its effective car handling capacity by more than 15%. The railroad company incorporated all the recommendations by IYSO in the final layout which is now under construction.

CSX Transportation licenses the Innovative Locomotive Planning Optimizer (ILPO) from Innovative Scheduling and starts integrating it with the LFPS (Locomotive and Fuel Plan System).

When in production, ILPO will generate an optimized locomotive plan for CSX’s scheduled train network (merchandise, auto, and intermodal trains). As the CSX train plan undergoes changes on a weekly basis, ILPO will revise its locomotive plan and keep it current. Extensive computational tests of ILPO on the CSX data have demonstrated that ILPO can generate implementable locomotive plans and reduce the locomotive operating costs by 3% to 5%.

CSX Transportation entered into a Development Partnership with Innovative Scheduling to build and deploy the Innovative Locomotive Shop Router(ILSR) decision support system.

ILSR directs locomotives to shops so that they arrive at shops for quarterly maintenances on time and consistent with shop capacities. Since this system has been put into production, the number of out-of-service locomotives has decreased significantly.

Pacer Stacktrain a transporter of container loads over rail networks, has hired Innovative Scheduling to develop a network planning system to assist in their empty container distribution.

With containers often being in short supply when demands are high, customer demands often go unmet. This system assists Pacer in determining the number of containers to lease in order to meet its customer demand optimally. This model is also being used to perform a variety of what-if studies related to container supply and distribution.

Under a Development Partnership with CSX Transportation, CSX Transportation selects Innovative Scheduling for Development Partnership Innovative Locomotive Simulation Optimizer (ILSO) decision support system.

ILSO simulates locomotives in a railroad network and assesses network performance measures, such as locomotive utilization, locomotive terminal dwell times, shop queues and shop productivity. The system assists locomotive management at CSX in making strategic and planning decisions related to locomotive acquisition, fleet mix, shop locations, and shop capacities.

BNSF Railway licensed Innovative Scheduling’s Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer (IRBO) and integrated with its planning system,ESD (Enhanced Service Design).

BNSF uses IRBO for various planning purposes: to update its blocking plan as traffic patterns and volumes change, to reduce blocking costs, encourage the flow of railcars in certain corridors, and yard location and capacity analysis. Innovative Scheduling continues to assist by providing maintenance services to BNSF, as well as performing various enhancements and upgrades needed to better meet its evolving planning needs.

Norfolk Southern is using IRBO to identify opportunities to improve its blocking plan and for various strategic and planning studies. IRBO is now an integral part of its railroad planning suite.

Norfolk Southern Corporation has licensed Innovative Scheduling’s Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer(IRBO). IRBO has been integrated with Operating Plan Developer (OPD), Norfolk Southern’s main planning systems.

The NSF (National Science Foundation), the premier research funding agency in the US, has awarded research grants to Innovative Scheduling to build the Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer (IRBO).

Innovative Scheduling received these highly competitive Phase I, Phase II, and Phase IIB grants to perform the research needed to develop the optimization engine for IRBO and various enhancements, as well as to build the web-based decision support system to integrate the IRBO engine with databases, reports and maps.

BNSF Railway seed funding to Innovative Scheduling to build Innovative Train Scheduling Optimizer (ITSO), an interactive web-based decision support system to solve train schedule design problems. This funding would develop the first version of ITSO, an optimization engine to create a railroad’s train plan taking into account all essential train operating costs (railcars, crews, and locomotives) and honoring network capacities (tracks and yards).

The NSF (National Science Foundation) supplemented BNSF Railway funding and provided Phase I, Phase II, and Phase IIB funding to build the Innovative Train Scheduling Optimizer (ITSO). This decision support system, when combined with the Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer (IRBO), enables a railroad to develop a clean-slate or incremental optimized operating plans within a few days, a process that currently requires months of painstaking effort from a team of planners.

Innovative Scheduling, in partnership with MultiModal Applied Systems (now a subsidiary of Oliver Wyman), used the Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer (IRBO) to develop CSX’s blocking plan that went into production in 2004.

Innovative Scheduling also engaged in a study to determine optimal yard locations and yard capacities. This quantitative study provided deep insights that CSX used in its yard rationalization exercises.

An optimization engine for allocating a supply of Toyota (with different configurations) to meet the demand of various dealers in a fair and equitable manner, has been developed by Innovative Scheduling.

This decision problem arises when there is an insufficient supply of cars to meet the dealer’s demand, and the demand needs to be met proportionately. This engine is now an integral part of Toyota’s distribution planning system.

United Airlines awarded Innovative Scheduling several grants to develop algorithms and prototype software for solving fleet scheduling problems. These models that were developed through this funding include the Combined Through and Fleet Assignment Model (ctFAM), multicriteria ctFAM, and ctFAM with time windows. These models demonstrated potential annual savings of $25 million to $50 million.