Title
A demand-responsive decision support system for coal transportation
Abstract
In this paper, a demand-responsive decision support system is proposed by integrating the operations of coal shipment, coal stockpiles and coal railing within a whole system. A generic and flexible scheduling optimisation methodology is developed to identify, represent, model, solve and analyse the coal transport problem in a standard and convenient way. As a result, the integrated train-stockpile-ship timetable is created and optimised for improving overall efficiency of coal transport system. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis based on extensive computational experiments is conducted to validate the proposed methodology. The mathematical proposition and proof are concluded as technical and insightful advices for industry practice. The proposed methodology provides better decision making on how to assign rail rolling-stocks and upgrade infrastructure in order to significantly improve capacity utilisation with the best resource-effectiveness ratio. The proposed decision support system with train-stockpile-ship scheduling optimisation techniques is promising to be applied in railway or mining industry, especially as a useful quantitative decision making tool on how to use more current rolling-stocks or whether to buy additional rolling-stocks for mining transportation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1016/j.dss.2012.08.012
Decision Support Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
proposed methodology,coal transportation,demand-responsive decision support system,coal stockpile,coal shipment,coal transport system,coal transport problem,coal railing,useful quantitative decision,proposed decision support system,better decision,decision support system
Mining industry,Scheduling (computing),Computer science,Transport system,Decision support system,Operations research,Knowledge management,Upgrade,Schedule,Coal,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
54
1
0167-9236
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.45
24
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Erhan Kozan131532.28
Shi Qiang Liu2645.40