Rolling Stock Circulation Planning

Efficient vehicle scheduling in rail freight transport is a key challenge in logistics and transport management. In rail freight transport, the focus is on optimising fleet deployment to minimise costs and ensure reliable and punctual delivery of goods. The increasing demand for environmentally friendly transport solutions and scarce resources require particularly careful planning that takes into account both economic and environmental objectives.

The aim of this thesis is to develop optimisation approaches that can be applied to rail freight transport.  Special emphasis is put on the consideration of real boundary conditions such as capacity limits, integration with passenger transport and fluctuating demand, which make planning even more difficult. Another important aspect is change planning, which becomes necessary when deviations or unforeseen disturbances occur, such as traffic disruptions, vehicle cancellations or changes in demand. The aim here is to develop algorithms that generate solutions for the new planning situation on the basis of previous planning.