2015 Wagner Prize Finalist - U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & CSX Transportation Inc.

Integrated Planning of Multi-type Locomotive Service Facilities under Location, Routing and Inventory Considerations

Long term infrastructure planning of locomotive service facilities is vital to the efficiency of the railroad. We developed a large-scale optimization model that integrates decisions on (i) location, capability, and capacity of fixed facilities, (ii) home location and routing plan of movable facilities, and (iii) assignment of a variety of service demands. A decomposition-based solution framework was developed and shown to bring significant economic benefits in full-scale implementations.