Salt Lake City Meeting

The Spring 2000 INFORMS National Meeting was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, May 7-10, 2000. For more information, contact Bengt Mutén, Reebie Associates, the cluster chair, at 203-705-0455, or by e-mail at muten@reebie.com .

Click here for information about the full INFORMS conference.

RASIG Roundtable - E-business & Railroads - Sunday May 7 1:00 - 5:00 pm - Blue Spruce Room - Wyndham Hotel

Coordinators, Ajith Wijeratne, Norfolk Southern, awijerat@nscorp.com, 404-529-1522, and Pooja Dewan, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Pooja.Dewan@bnsf.com, 817-352-2257

The objectives of the roundtable were discuss and better understand the following issues associated with e-Business:

Expected changes in railroads and rail customers as a result of e-Business
What do customers expect from railroads? Have their expectations changed as a result of increased use of e-Business?
What are customer priorities as far as railroads' implementation of e-Business? What do customers value more- reliable service, shorter transit time, web-enabled marketing, web-enabled service, customer profiles, service levels?
What are railroads' priorities with respect to implementation of e-Business?
What operational changes are imposed on railroads because of increased openness associated with e-Business?
Alternative strategies for railroads in implementing e-Business
What opportunities are available to use Operations Research in e-Business

1:00	Guest Speaker: Mike Gorman for Gregory C. Fox, VP-Ebusiness, BNSF
1:45	Roundtable on E-Business in Railroads Moderators: Ajith Wijeratne, NS and Pooja Dewan, BNSF
	Panelists: Mike Gorman, Director e-Business, BNSF Admir Mesalic, General Electric Bill Hubbard, Director Logistics Solutions, i2 Technologies Bruce L. Haddan, Assistant Vice President Marketing, Norfolk Southern
2:00	Presentations by Panelists
3:45	Break
4:00	Group Discussion
4:45	Panel Discussion Summary Pooja Dewan

Business Meeting - Sunday May 7 5:00 - 6:00 pm - Blue Spruce Room - Wyndham Hotel

Run-off in the election of Treasurer. The new slate of officers is announced. Proposed changes to the RASIG Constitution are discussed.

Dutch Treat Dinner - Sunday May 7 6:30 pm

Members of RASIG gather at a local eatery (announced at the business meeting). Everybody is welcome.

Session 1 - Locomotive Planning Systems Within Railroads - Monday May 8 10:30 am - 12:00 noon

Coordinator Pooja Dewan, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Pooja.Dewan@bnsf.com, 817-352-2257.

Integrating a Locomotive Optimization Model into the Production Environment

Anshu Pathak, Canadian National, ANSHU.PATHAK@cn.ca, 514-399-7411.
This paper describes the integration of optimization models into production environments and the subsequent changes in data requirements and work processes. The implementation of LDM (Locomotive Distribution Model) at CN will be described.

Estimating the 2001 Locomotive Fleet Size for Norfolk Southern
Mike Wilson & Ajith Wijeratne. awijerat@nscorp.com, 404-897-3028, Norfolk Southern.
This paper describes the process we followed to estimate the number of road locomotives NS will need for 2001. We will describe the model, data and the software used in this study.

Implementation of a Real-Time Locomotive Distribution System at BNSF Railway

Brian Roth, BNSF, Brian.Roth@bnsf.Com, 817-352-2269.
We discuss BNSF Railway's ongoing effort to implement a real-time Locomotive Distribution System based on the Locomotive Routing Model developed by Princeton University. Current status and major difficulties encountered during the experience are described, and a summary of the performance of the model relative to historical operations is given.

New Approaches for Large-Scale Locomotive Scheduling Problems

Ravindra K. Ahuja, University of Florida, ahuja@ufl.edu, 352-392-3615, James B. Orlin, MIT, jorlin@MIT.EDU, 617-253-6606 and Larry Shughart, CSX, Larry_Shughart@csx.com, 904-381-2792.
We are studying locomotive scheduling problems at the CSX Transportation and are focusing on incorporating a variety of practical constraints and business rules. We are developing new integer programming as well as network optimization based algorithms. We will discuss our progress to date in solving this problem.

Session 2 - Cancelled

Session 3 - Operations Research in Rail Operations - Monday May 8 4:00-5:30 pm

Joint TSS - RASIG Session

Coordinator Alexandra Newman, The Naval Postgraduate School, 831-656-3113.

Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis of Train Dispatchers at Inter-Train Conflict Resolution

Ismail Sahin, Yildiz Technical University, ismail.sahin@yildiz.edu.tr

Adaptive Dynamic Programming for Locomotive Scheduling

Belgacem Bouzaiene-Ayari, belgacem@princeton.edu, and Warren Powell, Princeton University, powell@princeton.edu

Determining Processing Sequence of Trains in Railway Classification Yards

Edwin R Kraft, chipkraft@aol.com.
This system was field tested in 1994 at Union Pacific's Hinkle yard. The goal was not to make all connections, but to ensure at least a subset of the most important ones were protected. A mixed integer, nonlinear mathematical programming problem was solved in 15-20 seconds on a small microcomputer.

An Integrated Model for Train Dispatching and Maintenance Scheduling

Yusin Lee, yusin@mail.ncku.edu.tw, Li-Wen Chen, idofmy.bbs@bbs.civil.ncku.edu.tw, and Chieh-Ju Chen, MavisG.bbs@bbs.civil.ncku.edu.tw, National Cheng Kung University.
Trains have to be maintained at certain limited service mileage. We propose an MIP with embedded network flow structure that solves for an optimal train dispatch and maintenance schedule. The model size is linear to the number of trains in the system, and can be easily modified to solve for various objectives.

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