Author(s)

M. Joborn

Abstract

At Swedish State Railways, the empty freight car distribution pro- cess is undergoing a major revision. The objective is to increase the utilization of the freight cars by improving the quality of the distri- bution process as well as reducing the size of the freight car fleet. In order to achieve this, the freight transportation process is revised and a new decision support system is developed. In this paper we describe the criteria of the new empty freight car distribution pro- cess. Further, the optimization model that constitutes the kernel of the new decision support system is illustrated. 1 Introduction The freight car fleet represents an important share of the invested capital of a railway company. A high utilization of the freight cars is therefore a necessity to be able to reduce the size

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