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 | | From: | Kamlesh Somani | | Subject: | Arena for Locomotive Scheduling Problem | | Date: | Sat, 06 Nov 2004 05:44:53 -0600 |
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 | Hi, We need some help on modeling of Locomotive Scheduling Problem using Arena.
We want to model a railroad system using Arena. We are mainly focusing
on Locomotive Scheduling problem (LSP).
In LSP, we are given the following:
-Trains schedule
-Number of locomotives in the system (Initial position of locomotives is
known)
-Locomotives can be more than one type and a train can have more than
one locomotive assigned which can be of different type, depending on
tonnage requirement of the train.
-On arrival of the train at a station, locomotives leave the train and
go to the locomotive pool (queue) at the station. The departing trains
get locomotives from the pool at the station. If locomotives are not
available, the train waits at the station till locomotives are available.
We plan to model LSP in arena in following way:
- Trains are entities.
- Locomotives are transporters.
- The pools are similar to the concept of waiting area in restaurant.
- Every station has a create module with a schedule module to start
train at given "Train Schedule".
Couple of modeling issues we are facing are:
- How can we assign multiple transporters (locomotives, which could be
of multiple types also) to entities.
- Consider a situation when the locomotives are waiting for train TA at
station SA. If a train TB to leave station SB and does not have
locomotives to pull the train, it will request the locomotive from
station SA (standard property of request module). We do not want this to
happen. Locomotives at SA should wait for assignment to TA and train TB
should wait for locomotives to come to the pool at station SB. How can
we do this?
- We are also considering other options like, treating train as
transporter and locomotive as entities, or treating both train and
locomotive as entities. Do you have any quick suggestion for this?
We look forward to your feedback.
Thank you,
Kamlesh
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