Optimization of Cargo Container Loading On Railway Wagons

 

Optimization of cargo container loading on railway wagons S. Aksentijević*, E. Tijan**, M. Jović*** and N. Munitić****  *

 Aksentijević Forensics and Consulting, Ltd., Viškovo, Croatia [email protected] [email protected]    of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime Studies/Department of maritime logistics and management, Rijeka, Croatia [email protected]   *** University of Rijeka, Faculty of Maritime M aritime Studies/Department of maritime logistics and management, Rijeka, Croatia  [email protected]   **** Ministry of the Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, Zagreb, Croatia [email protected]  

** University

 Abstract   - The aim of this paper is to research the optimization of loading cargo containers on railway wagons during the formation of railway compositions, by matching technical limitations of the wagons, as required by the wagon engineering discipline (“wagon loading schema” – includes cargo position, weight, and axle load, among other

the main prerequisite for the integration of this market segment into the EU market.

parameters), of theheight railway (maximum speed, railway class, limitations axle load, cargo etc.), as identified by the “State of the railway network” document issued by the Railway Infrastructure Manager HŽ Infrastruktura Ltd., and the commercial bill of lading. As a part of the research, a mobile Web application has been created and tested with the key pilot stakeholder, confirming the initial hypothesis that the optimization methodology can successfully be used in optimization of cargo container loading and placement on railway wagons, increasing efficiency and decreasing cost and harmful emissions.

[2] whose coming into effect hasliberalization determined ainbeginning of the railway transport market Croatia, the market consists of services and entities. Thus, defined market is operated by the infrastructure manager and operators of service facilities providing the railway services selected as needed in different groups: minimum access package, access to service facilities and to the services provided in these facilities, including track access to service facilities, additional and ancillary services.

 Keywords  - railway, liberalization, ICT

wagons,

intermodal

transport,

I.  I NTRODUCTION  In EU, the attention to efficiency and safety of international railway freight transport has EU grown in recent years [1]. With Croatian accession to the on the 1st of July 2013, a new Railway Act came into force [2], which consistently and integrally regulates the utilization of the railway system in the Republic of Croatia. With the new Railway Act the cargo transport market in Croatia has  been liberalized. liberalized. Croatian accession accession to the the EU has enabled free access of foreign railway cargo operators to national railway infrastructure under the same conditions that apply to national cargo operators. At the moment, there are ten railway cargo transporters registered in Croatia, including HŽ Cargo, previously the only one, and also a state-owned railway cargo operator. Currently, alternative operators have a market share of more than 50 % [3]. A final goal of the act is to achieve harmonization with the European legislation and conditions on the competitive railway services market. The railway operators and infrastructure maintenance and oversight are separated and functioning according to the free market principles,

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II.  THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK   According to the Railway Act (OJ No 94/13, 148/13)

Railway infrastructure is defined by the Railway Act as a “public good in general use, which under equal and transparent conditions should be available to all railway undertakings” [4]. The liberalization of the railway market tends to improve the quality of rail services for the railway transport users, at the same time reducing the maintenance costs of railway infrastructure and traffic management management for the amount of compensation which is collected from the railway. Railway Act imposes a non-discriminatory approach to railway infrastructure, and a possibility for legal  persons that are not railway transporters to lease sections of infrastructure. The access of railway transporters to terminals and sea and river ports has also been regulated. The transporters have the obligation to conduct business in accordance with market principles and apply the  principle of the freedom of service provision. Marked increase of the cargo transport on the terminal and port facilities in the Port of Rijeka has an important role in organization of business processes of cargo operators. Railway Safety Agency [4] serves as an independent regulatory body ensuring equal market conditions for all the operators. It also establishes the conditions for railway transport operation, monitors railway infrastructure status, railway services market, provides services of the railway infrastructure management and the conditions for usage of

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the infrastructure, the principles and procedures that apply to introducing and defining fees for railway services and assigns railway infrastructure capacities, the criteria for issuing and cancelling permits to railway operators, and the services of railway transport of special interest for the Republic of Croatia which a partly state-funded. It also creates a set of criteria according to which operators need to comply with the conditions monitored by the Agency for Railway Safety, that also issues certificates of safety and other related certificates. Sea (and river) ports may have a critical role in the increase of rail transport due to the fact that a large part of freight is carried by sea [5], [6]. This is the case in the port of Rijeka, located in an important geographic position [7] whereby its capacities must be well positioned and recognized on the traffic map of Europe in order to channel large volumes of cargo to its terminals. Considering the volumes of cargo that are unloaded from ships, the rail has an advantage over trucking because one train can transport a larger quantity of goods [8], it is more environmentally friendly [9], [10], [11], [12] and cheaper [13], [12]. Consequently, ship traffic increase in seaports is directly and positively correlated with the increase of the transport of goods by rail. With the ongoing and well recognized trend of containerization, even the cargo that was previously typically break-bulk cargo is nowadays placed in containers and transported as such. Therefore, it is of great interest for all cargo operators to optimize the process of container loading and wagon utilization, respecting the state of the railway rules. III.  BUSINESS LOGIC OF CONTAINER LOADING ON WAGONS

When loading cargo on wagons, it is extremely important to optimize loading in relation to the wagon capacity. The current mode is that operators, according to experience and by using simple Excel spreadsheets, create wagon utilization calculations and loading plans. Such  primitive work cannot ensure the ideal utilization of wagon capacity. The result is a loss of space and capacity on the wagon, inefficient work and inefficient rail transport. The solutioncalculate is to create tailor-made software that will independently the loading plan based on cargo and wagon data. This will speed up the loading  process and increase the productivity of rail transport. Ultimately it will also contribute to increased competitiveness of the transport route. The participating partner of TalkNet project [14], Port of Rijeka Authority, has contracted Aksentijevic Forensics and Consulting, Ltd., to provide the business process logic and application development for the optimization of loading containers on wagons. The Talknet project aims to encourage and improve coordination among key stakeholders to strengthen the integration between ports, inland terminals, transport operators and policy makers. Multimodality optimization and eco-innovation solutions are the two main fields of cooperation to establish transnational stakeholders' networks for freight transport A comprehensive analysis was undertaken in August 2019., that involved the following:

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Identification operators,

•

 

Identification of technical data on utilized wagons,

•

 

Identification of technical data on containers used,

•

 

Business process analysis of wagon cargo loading,

•

 

Translation of business case to application

•

 

requirements, Identification of application configuration and use-cases.

of

stakeholders

and

railway

After thorough analysis, a leading cargo rail service  provider in the region was chosen for the key pilot action. A management buy-in was obtained (the management was committed to allocating time resources in order to fully map the processes and provide insight into applicable  business needs needs and timely timely delivery of data, data, documents documents and information required to build the application). The application should present high usability and  portability, because because the employees employees working with the cargo wagon composing applications are remote workers and need accessibility outside of the office. As a suitable delivery method, Android application was selected, with the alternative being a Web-accessible application compliant with mobile phone and tablet browsers. Container train is composed of a number of wagon cars that can be owned by the cargo operator, or can be leased. Each wagon  type is characterized by specific technical data, among which most important are: •

   Number of axles axles

•

 

Weight

•

 

Maximum total weight

•

 

Length

•

 

Container loading schema.

Wagons are loaded with containers, and each wagon depending on the type, can carry one or more containers. are and standardized and theytics can [15]. be  divided  by Containers their length other characteristics characteris Most commonly used are 10 ft, 20 ft, 30 ft, 35 ft, 40 ft and 45 ft. intermodal containers. Furthermore, containers can have additional technical capabilities, for example, they can be high format containers (called high cube containers), open top containers, collapsible (foldable) containers, or reefer  – refrigerated refrigerated containers. containers. A task that railway cargo operators are facing is to form a train using the least number of wagons (effectively, loading each utilized wagon to the maximum of its capacity). During the pilot action, executed as a part of Interreg TalkNet project, it has come to the researchers' attention that cargo operators require an application that would be equally operable using workstations and mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. The envisaged application needs to achieve loading and distribution of the containers that need to constitute one shipment to available train wagon composition to be transported from

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 point A to B and show them visually/graphically. visually/graphically. Requirements for the application configuration that were identified during the process modelling were:  

Ability to enter wagon types and data

 

Ability to enter container models and data

 

Ability to enter and save train composition (up to 30 wagons each)

•

•

•

 

•

Furthermore, certain application functionalities were identified that constitute a minimum viable product (MVP) for this purpose. They are as follows:  

Input of the number and type of containers to be transported using bill of lading document

 

Load saved train composition to be used

 

Automatically distribute containers to wagons according to business rules

•

•

•

 

•

Possibility of a “manual” mode: drag and drop of containers to wagons after the composition has  been formed

•

Save loaded cargo train composition The application also needs to follow the basic rules of information security, meaning that different users should have separate usernames and logins, so every user can access only their own data related to train composition and end result, but can use predefined container types common for all users. Configuration data has to envisage wagon types (models), wagon-related data and loading schemas for predefined types of wagons. Output results need to be entered to final Excel loading lists that can be used by the field personnel to facilitate wagon loading, but also for data exchange with ERP and other systems.  

During the business modelling, certain characteristics of the wagons needed to be considered by the analysts as inputs for the optimization process. The key pilot partner uses six different types of wagons, and data that has to be entered into the model includes:   Wagon type name (e.g.: Sggrs(s) 80’, Laags...) •

 

Wagon tare weight (own weight)

 

Wagon load weight (in this case, cargo container(s) total gross weight)

 

Wagon gross weight (tare weight + container weight with loaded cargo)

 

Loading schema (how containers can be distributed on the wagon depending on container type – predefined by the engineers)

•

•

•

•

   Number of axles axles

•

 

•

Max load per axle (should be generally 20 t, but depends on the railway section)

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Wagon “registration number” (“license plate”) – a list of registration numbers should be entered in the system, belonging to (property of) an appropriate wagon type

Train composition characteristics that need to be respected for Rijeka container terminals are the following: •

 

Max. length of train composition in Rijeka: 505 m

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Max container load: 72 TEU

•

 

Max number of wagons: 36 (capable to transport 40' container each).

•

Abilitybyto email, exchange saved train composition data (e.g. using Google Drive, or other dedicated server storage) with other app users

 

A creation of train composition also needs to follow certain logic embedded inside the application. User needs to enter the number of wagons to be used in a composition and create a train composition by selecting available wagons in sequence. User has to upload cargo loading list in Excel form in the system. The system has to distribute containers to wagons, applying the following logic: •

 

Goal: maximum allowed load on each wagon

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Dangerous cargo containers have to be placed single at the wagon

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Refrigerated cargo containers have to be placed at the end of composition, if possible

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Axle load cannot exceed 20 tons per axle

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Warning has to be issued if high cube (HC) container is placed on “C intermodal wagon”

•

 

Containers need to be placed according to wagon's loading schema respecting set goal

The end result of the optimization should be a list of wagons with loaded containers, exportable to Excel, including train composition, tare weight, net weight, and gross weight. Also, the output should provide visual representation of the cargo composition and functionality to manually rearrange cargo containers placed on wagons after optimization; again, with final export to Excel/saveable, and notification that cargo composition is not optimized, but manually rearranged. IV.  SYSTEM DESCRIPTION AND DISCUSSION OF RESULTS The system Frontend uses Bootstrap and the following Bootstrap modules: jQuery, rangeslider.js, NProgress, FileSaver and SheetJS. Nginx is used to serve static files, and other bidirectional communication is achieved using Socket.IO. The server uses Linux Debian Stretch OS. Backend stability is ensured by using Supervisor module for Node.js (v10.16.3) run within screen instance. Database used is MariaDB v10.1.38. Server is leased VPS and public access is achieved accessing http:\\www.prailway.host. Accessing the URL, the user is presented with the login mask. The user can enter username and password, select option to be remember on that particular device, initiate login into the system or push the Contact button, invoking default e-mail client to contact the administrator in case of a forgotten password or a need to create a new account. The login mask is shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 2: Screen for train wagon composition composition selection

The application is able to parse the uploaded Excel list and to discern relevant data used for cargo optimization, which includes container type, container weight, type of goods, code, RID code (dangerous cargo) and other relevant data. After the bill of lading is uploaded to the server, it automatically optimizes the cargo load, considering all constraints, wagon loading schemas, types, characteristics and weight of containers to be loaded, their size and other train composition constraints. The end result is a graphic representation of the optimized train composition, as shown in Figure 3. In this example, there is a large number of wagons that are not necessary to transport the cargo on a particular bill of lading, because they remain empty after the optimization and can be excluded from the composition.

  Figure 1: Login mask for Prailway optimization application placed on http:\\www.prailway.host

After logging in, the user is presented with the main  panel. There are two different panels for administrators administrators and regular users. Administrators have the capability to add new users, assign access levels and create and reset entry passwords, while regular users can only use the core of the application. By using the functionalities of this  panel, the user can load previously saved train composition, exit from the application or create a new train composition. If the user selects the latter option, he needs to enter the goal train length (maximum allowed train length in meters), and after that, the user can form the composition, depending on the number of available (leased) cargo wagons. The system contains the embedded data for six wagon types used by the key pilot action partner: LGS-Z, KGS-Z, Rgs-Z, Laags, Sggmr22 and Sggr(s). This screen is shown in Figure 2. The system tracks added wagons in comparison to pre-set allowed train composition length, and after the user has entered the available wagons, he is  presented with the mask to upload the Excel bill of lading in form exported from existent cargo operator’s ERP.

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Finally, as required by the project, the user can click (in case that application is used on a workstation) or swipe (in case of touch sensitive devices) on a container loaded to a wagon, and retrieve container info, including size, TEU, container number, client, seal, size, transported goods, NHM, colli, tare weight, weight and sum of weight and tare. The user can then unload the container from the wagon to the server clipboard (or do the same with several containers), and then paste them to another wagon according to personal preferences. It is evident from Figure 3 that in this particular case, many wagons that were intially planned, after applied optimizations, are in fact not neccessary to transport predefined cargo list, and can be exluded from the train composition. The layout of the wagon unload screen for manual  placement after optimization is shown in Figure 4 on the following page.

Figure 3: Output of optimization process

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The achieved level of implementation and functionality has justified the project goals, as the container placement and loading are now not just reliant on operator’s experience and heuristics, but are structured and algorithm-supported. However, the application can be significantly upgraded. For example, at the moment, it is aimed towards railway leading to port of Rijeka and its container terminals. Railway rules are hardcoded in the system. Furthermore, it contains technical loading schemas for wagons types used by the key partner, but not for all possible wagons and tentatively those used by other rail cargo operators.

Figure 4: Manual placement mode

Finally, the user can export the formed composition in Excel format, that includes all data contained in the input list, but enriched with wagon composition and container numbers loaded to containers with positions (left, center left, center, center right or right-positioned) according to technical loading schemas. This Excel spreadsheet can be used as a container to be further uploaded to ERP systems, or directly by railway personnel to oversee and coordinate container loading on wagons.

Possible venues for upgrade are configurable settings for limitations of the railway, and different loading schemas for other wagon types, that would enable the inclusion of other cargo operators. Considering the ongoing implementation of a Port Community System  (PCS) in port of Rijeka, there is also a possibility of interfacing this application with the PCS railway module, to achieve additional synergies in the railway cargo optimization arena. Additionally, the application could be upgraded to support other ways of exchanging data with the surrounding ICT systems. Considering that PCS and container terminal operating systems typically use EDI and XML-format data exchange, such implementation is also recommended for railway cargo loading optimization application as a part of a possible future upgrade  project(s).

V.  CONCLUSION  When loading cargo on wagons, it is important to optimize loading, considering the wagon capacity and state of the railway rules. As a part of TalkNet Interreg Central Europe project, the lack of optimization and structured methodology in optimization of contained loading on wagons has been noted.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported by “TalkNet - Transport and Logistics Stakeholders Network” project (Interreg V-A Italy – Croatia 2014-2020) and by University of Rijeka under the Faculty of Maritime Studies projects.

After the funding was secured, a key pilot project  partner has been identified in form of a railway cargo transport company that provided an insight into the  business processes of container cargo transport by using railway.

R EFERENCES EFERENCES 

Business process modeling was composed of several steps that included the analysis of input data and bill of lading, characteristics of used containers (size and type), technical engineering analysis of used wagon types, analysis of the railway infrastructure that imposes limitations on rail traffic and, finally, the analysis of technology and methodology to be used during the optimization process. After the creation of the functional specification, IT technology analysis process was performed, where adequate server resources and development technologies were acquired and identified. The application has been created, and it was alpha and beta tested, with the last  phase being the user acceptance acceptance testing. The end result was very satisfying, and a structured application was  produced, providing contained loading and placement placement on different types of wagons that is accessible to all port stakeholders.

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