DOI 10.7603/s40707-013-0007-6 GSTF Journal of Engineering Technology (JET), Vol. 2 No. 3, Dec 2013 Handling Equipment Allocation Optimization of Railroad-highway Combined Transportation: Bi-Objective Model and MEACO Algorithm Qi Zhang, Yuan Ye, Li Zhang, and Hao Yang equipments are the machine both for such work and the crucial Abstract—Coordinating connection between railroad and conjunction t o c onnect t he r ailroad a nd hi ghway. Thus, one highway in multimodal transportation is very complex and important problem needs to be settled is to select properly and important. It is concerned with the time and cost consuming of allocate reasonably the equipments. There are at least two major containers, the operation efficiency, and resources allocation of railroad and highway. This paper studies the equipment allocation aspects need to be considered in the equipment selection and optimization in railway container center station. It establishes a allocation problem, ESAP. One is the machine type. It must be bi-objective optimization model to solve the problem. The two high e fficient a nd be suitable for what t o do. Another i s t he objectives of the model are getting the minimum daily machine a mount. It m ust b e en ough an d r easonable, either comprehensive costs of equipments, and getting the minimum meeting the business demand or without much idleness. dwelling time of railway container flatcars on loading and unloading line. Allocating more equipment will reduce the dwelling time obviously. But there are some risks of idle II. LITERATURE REVIEW equipment and high costs, too. These are two irreconcilable In recent years, many researchers are focusing on the objectives. The MEACO algorithm is used to solve this problem equipment selection and allocation problem. Some researchers making Chongqing container center station as an example. The are concerned with the most s uitable equipment selection in model is verified by actual data. The results suggest the optimal allocation of the handling equipments and are in accordance with railway stations, such as Song et al. (2005), Bai et al. (2002), Ma the fact of the station. (2005), Li et al. (2005). Some researchers are concerned with the tusk allocation basing on the equipment selection, such as Index Terms—Bi-objective optimization model, handling Murty K G (2000), Linn R (2003). Some r esearchers ar e equipment allocation, MEACO algorithm, railroad-highway concerned with the a mount d ecision problem of r ailway combined transportation container station, for example Liang et al. (2009), Huo et al. (2006), W ong ( 2008), L i e t al. (2009). Comparatively, m ost advanced r esearches ar e concerned with th e e quipments I. INTRODUCTION allocation problem of harbor and dock, such as Yang (1995), CF MOOTH connection co uld r educe t he t ime and co st Daganzo (1989), R. I. Peterkofsky & CF Daganzo (1990), J. B. S consuming in the transportation process. The advantage and Tabernacle (1995), J. Bose et al. (2000), Lai K.K & Lam K efficiency of railroad-highway combined transportation require (1994), Kozan E & Preston P (1999), CF Daganzo (1989), much f or co nnecting ef fectively o f these two different Pyung Hoi Koo (2004), Hao (2003), Ji et al. (2010), Yong et al. transportation m odes. Reducing t he l oading a nd unl oading (2008). business work and dwelling time seems to be a good measure. Researchers applied different m ethods and de veloped Railway c ontainer c enter s tation is th e j oint h ub in the different m odels, f rom v arious r esearch p oints, to solve the railroad-highway combined t ransportation. There are a lot of equipment selection and allocation problem. The r esearch results ar e ab undant, es pecially i n t he as pects o f harbor and loading a nd unl oading businesses in th e s tation. Handling dock. Bai et a l. ( 2002) s tudied th e alternative ty pes o f h andling Manuscript submitted on October 31, 2013. This work was supported in equipments which were lik ely to b e s uitable f or th e r ailway part by China Railway Corporation (2012X012-H), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2011JBM061). container station. The authors studied the yard utilization rate of Qi Zhang. An a ssociate p rofessor of School of Traffic & Transportation, each kind of equipments adopting the unit-acreage. Basing on Beijing J iaotong U niversity, B eijing, 100044, China (1-662-518-1762 o r the operation costs by the whole life cycle input-output method +86-18600231123; e-mail: [email protected]). (WLCIO), the authors gave the optimal selection of equipment Yuan Ye. Xiamen airport logistics management Co. Ltd, No.95 Xiangyun Rd, Huli District, Xiamen, 361000, China (email: [email protected]). type as Rail Mounted Gantry Crane (RMGC). Li Zhang. An associate professor of Civil and Environmental Department, Liang et al. (2009) combined the discrete event simulation Mississippi State University, S tarkville, MS 39759, U SA (e-mail: principle (DESP) with event graph method (EG/ED) to develop [email protected]). the simulation model. The authors divided the trailers into two Hao Yang. P rofessor o f S chool o f T raffic & T ransportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China (e-mail: [email protected]). types, the inner trailer operated by railroad yard and the outer ©The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access by the GSTF DOI: 10.5176/2251-3701_2.3.89 GSTF Journal of Engineering Technology (JET), Vol. 2 No. 3, Dec 2013 trailer operated by t he hi ghway t ransportation c orporations. III. Bi-objective Optimal Model of Handling Equipment With the simulation of outer trailer randomly arrival, the authors ALLOCATION obtained th e o ptimal allocation o f t ransferring resources, The handling equipment a llocation in r ailway c ontainer including t he i nner t railers a nd t he loading and unloading center s tations s hould meet the d emand o f timeliness o f equipments. container t ransportation an d t he r equirement o f o peration Basing on the research results of equipment type selection, benefits o f s tation a t th e s ame tim e. This paper d eveloped a Linn R (2003) solved the tusk allocation problem by proposing bi-objective o ptimal m odel with the bou nds f rom both daily mixed integer programming (MIP). The authors got the working comprehensive costs and dwelling time, making the equipment sequence and t ime s cheduling o f RMGC between d ifferent amount as its decision variable. container yards. R. I. Peterkofsky and CF Daganzo (1990) combined a A. Daily comprehensive costs of handling equipments Cg mathematical programming model with an allocation strategy to Basing on the relevant research results, this paper considered solve the static Quayside Container Crane Allocation Problem the main equipment of loading and unloading in railway (QCCAP). The authors calculated the maximum throughput of container center station is Rail Mounted Gantry Crane (RMGC). one b erth i n r ush ho ur a iming to reduce the waiting f ee an d Daily comprehensive costs of this machine should include some dwelling time of container ship. While J. B. Tabernacle (1995) kinds of costs, shown as table I. considered t he Q uayside C ontainer C rane (QCC) as parallel business a nd t ransferred t he Q CCAP i nto O pen Shop TABLE I Scheduling Problem (OSSP). The authors developed an integer COST CATEGORIES OF RMGC programming model and applied the branch and bound method Fixed Costs Variable Costs to solve the problem. depreciation funds daily maintenance cost Cost categories major repair funds fuel and electric power cost CF Daganzo (1989) formed an integer programming model acquisition cost cost of labor and designed an optimal inventory strategy to obtain an optimal RMGC business plan. The programming model aimed for the There ar e s ome m atching f acilities f or the operation of highest e fficiency of loading and unl oading b usiness o f a ll RMGC, such as the loading and unloading lines, hard-surface RMGCs allocated to work for the specific container ship. pavement of yards, and the running lines of RMGC. Then, there Ji e t a l. ( 2010) developed a S hortest P ath P roblem ( SPP) are the corresponding costs arising. optimal model from the point of view of simultaneous business f jth between in-port and ex-port container s hips. The authors Daily fixed costs j of the RMGC is shown as (1). applied th e P OEM o ptimal platform and used the s imulative 1i− c data to get results. According to the results, with the constraints () M fcjf=⋅+ of m inimum w aiting tim e o f Q uayside C ontainer Crane, the Nd× d (1) authors estimated the optimal amount of trailers matching the working plan of QCC. In equation (1), cf is the acquisition cost of each RMGC. cM is This paper focused its studies on the loading and unloading the average annual maintenance cost of each RMGC. N is the equipment amount decision in railway container center station. depreciation period and i is the residual value of the machine. Based on the problem description and literature review above, The last d is the working day of the railway container center the main contributions of this paper are described as follows. stations. • The paper considers the core of the seamless connection in th Daily operation costs cvj of the j RMGC is defined in (2).