In this paper we introduce the problem of shunting passenger train units in a railway station. Shunting occurs whenever train units are temporarily not necessary to operate a given timetable. We discuss several aspects of this problem and focus on two subproblems. We propose mathematical models...

The roster planning process at the Dutch security firm NVD was traditionally carried out by hand. A few years NVD was traditionally carried out by hand. A few years ago, because of changing labor laws in the Netherlands, this became practically impossible. We developed a decision support system...

This paper presents a dynamic approach to the vehicle scheduling problem. We discuss the potential benefit of our approach compared to the traditional one, where the vehicle scheduling problem is solved only once for a whole period and the travel times are assumed to be fixed. In our dynamic...

The roster planning process at the Dutch security firm NVD was traditionally carried out by hand. A few years ago, because of changing labor laws in The Netherlands, this became practically impossible. We developed a decision support system which has four main modules. The first one checks given...

This paper deals with models, relaxations and algorithms for an integrated approach to vehicle and crew scheduling. We discuss potential benefits of integration and provide an overview of the literature, which considers mainly partial integration. Our approach is new in the sense that we can...

This paper deals with a practical application of an integrated approach to vehicle and crew scheduling, that we have developed previously. Computational results have shown that our approach can be applied to problems of practical size. However, application of the approach to the actual problems...

In this paper the problem of scheduling train crew is considered. We discuss a general framework of which the method for solving the train crew scheduling problem is a special case. In particular, our method is a heuristic branch-and-price algorithm suitable for large scale crew scheduling...

At the time of writing we entered the final stage of implementing the crew rostering system Harmony CDR to facilitate the planning of catering crews on board of the Thalys, the High Speed Train connecting Paris, Cologne, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Geneva. Harmony CDR optimally supports the...

In this paper, we discuss a model-based algorithmic approach for supporting planners in the creation of shunt plans for passenger trains. The approach provides an example of a mathematical model and a corresponding solution approach for model based support. We introduce a four-step solution...

In this paper, we describe a new model for the Train Unit Shunting Problem. This model is capable of solving the matching and parking subproblems in an integrated manner, usually requiring a reasonable amount of computation time for generating acceptable solutions. Furthermore, the model...