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On Transport Service Selection in Intermodal Rail/Road A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bierwirth, Christian; Kirschstein, Thomas; Meisel, Frank Article On Transport Service Selection in Intermodal Rail/ Road Distribution Networks BuR - Business Research Provided in Cooperation with: VHB - Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft, German Academic Association of Business Research Suggested Citation: Bierwirth, Christian; Kirschstein, Thomas; Meisel, Frank (2012) : On Transport Service Selection in Intermodal Rail/Road Distribution Networks, BuR - Business Research, ISSN 1866-8658, VHB - Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft, German Academic Association of Business Research, Göttingen, Vol. 5, Iss. 2, pp. 198-219, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF03342738 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/103715 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu BuR -- Business Research Official Open Access Journal of VHB Br h6phqrvp6pvhvs 7vrSrrh puWC7 Volume5|Issue2|Irir ! ! ('! ( On Transport Service Selection in Intermodal Rail/Road Distribution Networks Christian Bierwirth, School for Economics and Business, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, E-mail: [email protected] Thomas Kirschstein, School for Economics and Business, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, E-Mail: [email protected] Frank Meisel, School for Economics and Business, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, E-Mail: [email protected] Abstract Intermodal rail/road freight transport constitutes an alternative to long-haul road transport for the distribution of large volumes of goods. The paper introduces the intermodal transportation problem for the tactical planning of mode and service selection. In rail mode, shippers either book train capacity on a per-unit basis or charter block trains completely. Road mode is used for short-distance haulage to intermodal terminals and for direct shipments to customers. We analyze the competition of road and intermodal transportation with regard to freight consolidation and service cost on a model basis. The approach is applied to a distribution system of an industrial company serving customers in eastern Europe. The case study investigates the impact of transport cost and consolidation on the optimal modal split. JEL-classification: R41, M11, L92 Keywords: intermodal transportation problem, service selection, transport cost rates, sustainable transport chain Manuscript received April 23, 2012, accepted by Karl Inderfurth (Operations and Information Systems) July 25, 2012. 1 Introduction instead of long-haul road transports from the Intermodal freight transport reflects the combina- shipper’s door to the customer’s door. However, tion of two or more modes of transport (e.g., road, several prerequisites must hold in order to make rail, water) within a single transport chain. It is the intermodal transport of goods profitable. generally assumed that the moved goods are con- 1. The cost rate per transport unit and kilometer tainerized and, thus, allow a standardized hand- must be significantly smaller in rail transporta- ling during the transfer between any two modes tion than in road transportation. Otherwise, involved in the transport. Intermodal freight trans- the intermodal transport cost would exceed the port is receiving increasing attention in the Euro- road transport cost because the traveling dis- pean transport economy as it is considered a way to tance of an intermodal chain is always longer increase traffic safety, and to reduce road conges- than the direct distance from door to door. tion and air pollution at the same time (European Communities 2002). 2. The hauling distance between the shipper’s In this paper we concentrate on intermodal door and the customer’s door must be above rail/road transport from the viewpoint of a certain break-even distance. This is because a large shipper organization. Today, many the cost incurred by an intermodal transport shippers consider intermodal transportation as includes additional fees which are charged by an alternative for delivering goods to customers intermodal terminal operators for transferring a transport unit from road to rail or from rail to 198 BuR -- Business Research Official Open Access Journal of VHB Br h6phqrvp6pvhvs 7vrSrrh puWC7 Volume5|Issue2|Irir ! ! ('! ( road. The cost advantage of rail transport can investigated. In section 3, a tactical transportation only compensate the additional fees beyond a planning model is presented which can be used by certain distance covered by rail carriage. shippers to decide on serving customers by road, intermodal rail/road transportation, or a mixture 3. The transport is not time critical as it is known thereof. This includes also identifying realistic cost that intermodal transport usually takes con- functions and freight consolidation effects, which siderably more time compared to direct road are incorporated in a mathematical optimization transport. model. Section 4 illustrates the model by a small Shippers must have a model for intermodal trans- problem instance to shed light on the impact of cost port planning which is different from models used and the structure of optimal decisions. Section 5 for planning the long-haul road transports. Such presents a case study for a company that serves cus- a model aims at deciding on the transport facil- tomers in eastern Europe from production sites in ities to use and on the capacity that needs to be western Europe. The paper is concluded in section provided by carriers on each transport mode in 6. order to realize a cost-effective flow of cargo. The contribution of this paper is to provide such a 2 Literature model for the tactical transportation planning. It incorporates the selection of modes of transport, The growing interest in sustainable (or green) lo- transport services, and the consolidation of cargo gistics has also given rise to the rapid progress flows. Scalable cost functions for road and rail of scientific literature on intermodal transporta- transport are included in the model in order to tion. A framework classifying the diverse contri- consider realistic cost rates for the transshipment butions in this field was proposed by Macharis and movement of goods. This way, economies of and Bontekoning (2004) and Caris, Macharis, and scale and consolidation effects are captured in the Janssens (2008). In these survey papers the au- model. thors employed a classification which contains 12 It is shown by a real-world case study how optimal categories combining (i) the type of operator that transport decisions can be made in a distribution faces an operations problem in the intermodal network with competing rail and road transport transportation chain and (ii) the time horizon of services. For this purpose, we consider a com- the problem. It is distinguished between pany which produces a certain good in a couple • drayage operators, who move goods by truck of sites located within one region. The demand between intermodal terminals and the ship- region where the customers reside is far from the pers and receivers, supply region. There are three distinct services available for the transport of goods. In the first • terminal operators, who transship goods from service, called door-to-door (D2D), a transport road to rail and from rail to road, unit is moved directly from a production site to a • customer’s location by means of a road transport. network operators, who carry goods within the In both other transport services, the goods are first railway network, and, moved by truck to an intermodal terminal located • intermodal operators, who represent the users in the origin region, then moved by train to an of the intermodal infrastructure. intermodal terminal of the destination region, and finally moved by truck from the destination ter- Intermodal operators are either shippers or re- minal to the customer. The rail transport, which ceivers themselves, or freight forwarders who orga- takes most of the transport distance, can either nize the carriage of goods on behalf of the shippers appear in less-than-train load (LTL) mode where or the receivers. The length of the time horizon a company pays a charge for each unit of load, or of a problem assigns it to the strategic, tactical in full-train-load (FTL) mode where the company or operational level. Long-term decisions in inter- charters
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