TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Optimization of Handouts for Rolling Stock Rotations Visualization N2 - A railway operator creates (rolling stock) rotations in order to have a precise master plan for the operation of a timetable by railway vehicles. A rotation is considered as a cycle that multiply traverses a set of operational days while covering trips of the timetable. As it is well known, the proper creation of rolling stock rotations by, e.g., optimization algorithms is challenging and still a topical research subject. Nevertheless, we study a completely different but strongly related question in this paper, i.e.: How to visualize a rotation? For this purpose, we introduce a basic handout concept, which directly leads to the visualization, i.e., handout of a rotation. In our industrial application at DB Fernverkehr AG, the handout is exactly as important as the rotation itself. Moreover, it turns out that also other European railway operators use exactly the same methodology (but not terminology). Since a rotation can have many handouts of different quality, we show how to compute optimal ones through an integer program (IP) by standard software. In addition, a construction as well as an improvement heuristic are presented. Our computational results show that the heuristics are a very reliable standalone approach to quickly find near-optimal and even optimal handouts. The efficiency of the heuristics is shown via a computational comparison to the IP approach. T3 - ZIB-Report - ZR-16-73 Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61430 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Breugem, Thomas A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schulz, Christof T1 - A Three-Phase Heuristic for Cyclic Crew Rostering with Fairness Requirements N2 - In this paper, we consider the Cyclic Crew Rostering Problem with Fairness Requirements (CCRP-FR). In this problem, attractive cyclic rosters have to be constructed for groups of employees, considering multiple, a priori determined, fairness levels. The attractiveness follows from the structure of the rosters (e.g., sufficient rest times and variation in work), whereas fairness is based on the work allocation among the different roster groups. We propose a three-phase heuristic for the CCRP-FR, which combines the strength of column generation techniques with a large-scale neighborhood search algorithm. The design of the heuristic assures that good solutions for all fairness levels are obtained quickly, and can still be further improved if additional running time is available. We evaluate the performance of the algorithm using real-world data from Netherlands Railways, and show that the heuristic finds close to optimal solutions for many of the considered instances. In particular, we show that the heuristic is able to quickly find major improvements upon the current sequential practice: For most instances, the heuristic is able to increase the attractiveness by at least 20% in just a few minutes. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-43 KW - Crew Planning KW - Column Generation KW - Variable-Depth Neighborhood Search Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-74297 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Sahin, Guvenc A1 - Ahmadi, Amin A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Multi-Period Line Planning with Resource Transfers N2 - Urban transportation systems are subject to a high level of variation and fluctuation in demand over the day. When this variation and fluctuation are observed in both time and space, it is crucial to develop line plans that are responsive to demand. A multi-period line planning approach that considers a changing demand during the planning horizon is proposed. If such systems are also subject to limitations of resources, a dynamic transfer of resources from one line to another throughout the planning horizon should also be considered. A mathematical modelling framework is developed to solve the line planning problem with transfer of resources during a finite length planning horizon of multiple periods. We analyze whether or not multi-period solutions outperform single period solutions in terms of feasibility and relevant costs. The importance of demand variation on multi-period solutions is investigated. We evaluate the impact of resource transfer constraints on the effectiveness of solutions. We also study the effect of line type designs and question the choice of period lengths along with the problem parameters that are significant for and sensitive to the optimality of solutions. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-51 Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-74662 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Re-optimizing ICE Rotations after a Tunnel Breakdown near Rastatt N2 - Planning rolling stock movements in industrial passenger railway applications isa long-term process based on timetables which are also often valid for long periods of time. For these timetables and rotation plans, i.e., plans of railway vehicle movements are constructed as templates for these periods. During operation the rotation plans are affected by all kinds of unplanned events. An unusal example for that is the collapse of a tunnel ceiling near Rastatt in southern Germany due to construction works related to the renewal of the central station in Stuttgart. As a result the main railway connection between Stuttgart and Frankfurt am Main, located on top of the tunnel, had to be closed from August 12th to October 2nd 2017. This had a major impact on the railway network in southern Germany. Hence, all rotation plans and train schedules for both passenger and cargo traffic had to be revised. In this paper we focus on a case study for this situation and compute new rotation plans via mixed integer programming for the ICE high speed fleet of DB Fernverkehr AG one of the largest passenger railway companies in Europe. In our approach we take care of some side constraints to ensure a smooth continuation of the rotation plans after the disruption has ended. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-02 KW - case study KW - re-optimization KW - railway rolling stock optimization KW - mixed integer programming Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-73976 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - A Hypergraph Model for Railway Vehicle Rotation Planning N2 - We propose a model for the integrated optimization of vehicle rotations and vehicle compositions in long distance railway passenger transport. The main contribution of the paper is a hypergraph model that is able to handle the challenging technical requirements as well as very general stipulations with respect to the ``regularity'' of a schedule. The hypergraph model directly generalizes network flow models, replacing arcs with hyperarcs. Although NP-hard in general, the model is computationally well-behaved in practice. High quality solutions can be produced in reasonable time using high performance Integer Programming techniques, in particular, column generation and rapid branching. We show that, in this way, large-scale real world instances of our cooperation partner DB Fernverkehr can be solved. T3 - ZIB-Report - 11-36 KW - Rolling Stock Planning, Hypergraph Modeling, Integer Programming, Column Generation, Rapid Branching Y1 - 2011 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-32746 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schulz, Christof A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - The Rolling Stock Rotation Planning Problem under Revenue Considerations N2 - In many railway undertakings a railway timetable is offered that is valid for a longer period of time. At DB Fernverkehr AG, one of our industrial partners, this results in a summer and a winter timetable. For both of these timetables rotation plans, i.e., a detailed plan of railway vehicle movements is constructed as a template for this period. Sometimes there are be periods where you know for sure that vehicle capacities are not sufficient to cover all trips of the timetable or to transport all passenger of the trips. Reasons for that could be a heavy increase of passenger flow, a heavy decrease of vehicle availability, impacts from nature, or even strikes of some employees. In such events the rolling stock rotations have to be adapted. Optimization methods are particularly valuable in such situations in order to maintain a best possible level of service or to maximize the expected revenue using the resources that are still available. In most cases found in the literature, a rescheduling based on a timetable update is done, followed by the construction of new rotations that reward the recovery of parts of the obsolete rotations. We consider a different, novel, and more integrated approach. The idea is to guide the cancellation of the trips or reconfiguration of the vehicle composition used to operate a trip of the timetable by the rotation planning process, which is based on the mixed integer programming approach presented in Reuther (2017). The goal is to minimize the operating costs while cancelling or operating a trip with an insufficient vehicle configuration in sense of passenger capacities inflicts opportunity costs and loss of revenue, which are based on an estimation of the expected number of passengers. The performance of the algorithms presented in two case studies, including real world scenarios from DB Fernverkehr AG and a railway operator in North America. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-01 Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-71339 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Hatzel, Meike A1 - Wiederrecht, Sebastian T1 - The Tight Cut Decomposition of Matching Covered Uniformable Hypergraphs N2 - The perfect matching polytope, i.e. the convex hull of (incidence vectors of) perfect matchings of a graph is used in many combinatorial algorithms. Kotzig, Lovász and Plummer developed a decomposition theory for graphs with perfect matchings and their corresponding polytopes known as the tight cut decomposition which breaks down every graph into a number of indecomposable graphs, so called bricks. For many properties that are of interest on graphs with perfect matchings, including the description of the perfect matching polytope, it suffices to consider these bricks. A key result by Lovász on the tight cut decomposition is that the list of bricks obtained is the same independent of the choice of tight cuts made during the tight cut decomposition procedure. This implies that finding a tight cut decomposition is polynomial time equivalent to finding a single tight cut. We generalise the notions of a tight cut, a tight cut contraction and a tight cut decomposition to hypergraphs. By providing an example, we show that the outcome of the tight cut decomposition on general hypergraphs is no longer unique. However, we are able to prove that the uniqueness of the tight cut decomposition is preserved on a slight generalisation of uniform hypergraphs. Moreover, we show how the tight cut decomposition leads to a decomposition of the perfect matching polytope of uniformable hypergraphs and that the recognition problem for tight cuts in uniformable hypergraphs is polynomial time solvable. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-61 KW - uniform hypergraphs KW - perfect matchings KW - tight cuts Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-71149 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Egerer, Ascan A1 - Karbstein, Marika A1 - Messerschmidt, Ralf A1 - Perez, Marc A1 - Pfisterer, Steven A1 - Strauß, Petra T1 - Kombilösung: Optimierung des Liniennetzes in Karlsruhe N2 - Wir beschreiben die Optimierung des Nahverkehrsnetzes der Stadt Karlsruhe im Zusammmenhang mit den Baumaßnahmen der sogenannten Kombilösung. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-45 KW - ÖPNV KW - Linienplanung Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-69677 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Olthoff, Mats T1 - A Solution Approach to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Perishable Goods N2 - This paper focuses on a special case of vehicle routing problem where perishable goods are considered. Deliveries have to be performed until a due date date, which may vary for different products. Storing products is prohibited. Since late deliveries have a direct impact on the revenues for these products, a precise demand prediction is important. In our practical case the product demands and vehicle driving times for the product delivery are dependent on weather conditions, i.e., temperatures, wind, and precipitation. In this paper the definition and a solution approach to the Vehicle Routing Problem with Perishable Goods is presented. The approach includes a procedure how historical weather data is used to predict demands and driving times. Its run time and solution quality is evaluated on different data sets given by the MOPTA Competition 2018. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-03 Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-77020 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - A Cut Separation Approach for the Rolling Stock Rotation Problem with Vehicle Maintenance T2 - 19th Symposium on Algorithmic Approaches for Transportation Modelling, Optimization, and Systems (ATMOS 2019) N2 - For providing railway services the company’s railway rolling stock is one if not the most important ingredient. It decides about the number of passenger or cargo trips the company can offer, about the quality a passenger experiences the train ride and it is often related to the image of the company itself. Thus, it is highly desired to have the available rolling stock in the best shape possible. Moreover, in many countries, as Germany where our industrial partner DB Fernverkehr AG (DBF) is located, laws enforce regular vehicle inspections to ensure the safety of the passengers. This leads to rolling stock optimization problems with complex rules for vehicle maintenance. This problem is well studied in the literature for example see Maroti and Kroon 2005, or Cordeau et. al. 2001 for applications including vehicle maintenance. The contribution of this paper is a new algorithmic approach to solve the Rolling Stock Rotation Problem for the ICE high speed train fleet of DBF with included vehicle maintenance. It is based on a relaxation of a mixed integer linear programming model with an iterative cut generation to enforce the feasibility of a solution of the relaxation in the solution space of the original problem. The resulting mixed integer linear programming model is based on a hypergraph approach presented in Borndörfer et. al. 2015. The new approach is tested on real world instances modeling different scenarios for the ICE high speed train network in Germany and compared to the approaches of Reuther 2017 that are in operation at DB Fernverkehr AG. The approach shows a significant reduction of the run time to produce solutions with comparable or even better objective function values. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-61 Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-75501 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Euler, Ricardo A1 - Karbstein, Marika A1 - Mett, Fabian T1 - Ein mathematisches Modell zur Beschreibung von Preissystemen im öV N2 - Dieses Dokument fasst den Stand der mathematischen Modellierung von Preissystemen des öV mittels eines am ZIB entwickelten Tarifgraphenmodells zusammen. Damit sind sehr einfache und konzise Beschreibungen von Tarifstrukturen möglich, die sich algorithmisch behandeln lassen: Durch das zeitgleiche Tracken eines Pfades im Routinggraphen im Tarifgraphen kann schon während einer Routenberechnung der Preis bestimmt werden. Wir beschreiben zunächst das Konzept. Die konkrete Realisierung wird im Folgenden beispielhaft an den Tarifsystemen der Verkehrsverbünde Warnow, MDV, Vogtland, Bremen/Niedersachsen, Berlin/Brandenburg und Mittelsachsen erläutert. Anschließend folgen Überlegungen zur konkreten Implementierung von Kurzstrecken-Tarifen und zur Behandlung des Verbundübergriffs. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-47 Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-70564 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Hoppmann, Heide A1 - Karbstein, Marika A1 - Lindner, Niels T1 - Separation of Cycle Inequalities in Periodic Timetabling N2 - Cycle inequalities play an important role in the polyhedral study of the periodic timetabling problem. We give the first pseudo-polynomial time separation algo- rithm for cycle inequalities, and we give a rigorous proof for the pseudo-polynomial time separability of the change-cycle inequalities. Moreover, we provide several NP-completeness results, indicating that pseudo-polynomial time is best possible. The efficiency of these cutting planes is demonstrated on real-world instances of the periodic timetabling problem. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-16 KW - Periodic timetabling KW - Cycle inequality KW - Change-cycle inequality Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-69746 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Weider, Steffen T1 - Integrated Optimization of Rolling Stock Rotations for Intercity Railways N2 - This paper provides a highly integrated solution approach for rolling stock planning problems in the context of intercity passenger traffic. The main contributions are a generic hypergraph based mixed integer programming model and an integrated algorithm for the considered rolling stock rotation planning problem. The new developed approach is able to handle a very large set of industrial railway requirements, such as vehicle composition, maintenance constraints, infrastructure capacity, and regularity aspects. By the integration of this large bundle of technical railway aspects, we show that our approach has the power to produce implementable rolling stock rotations for our industrial cooperation partner DB Fernverkehr. This is the first time that the rolling stock rotations at DB Fernverkehr could be optimized by an automated system utilizing advanced mathematical programming techniques. T3 - ZIB-Report - 12-39 KW - Mixed Integer Programming KW - Railway Optimization KW - Rolling Stock Rostering Y1 - 2012 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-16424 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Mehrgardt, Julika A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Waas, Kerstin T1 - Re-optimization of Rolling Stock Rotations N2 - The Rolling Stock Rotation Problem is to schedule rail vehicles in order to cover timetabled trips by a cost optimal set of vehicle rotations. The problem integrates several facets of railway optimization, i.e., vehicle composition, maintenance constraints, and regularity aspects. In industrial applications existing schedules often have to be re-optimized to integrate timetable changes or construction sites. We present an integrated modeling and algorithmic approach for this task as well as computational results for industrial problem instances of DB Fernverkehr AG. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-60 Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-42569 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Scheidweiler, Robert T1 - Perfect f-Matchings and f-Factors in Hypergraphs - A Combinatorial Approach N2 - We prove characterizations of the existence of perfect f-matchings in uniform mengerian and perfect hypergraphs. Moreover, we investigate the f-factor problem in balanced hypergraphs. For uniform balanced hypergraphs we prove two existence theorems with purely combinatorial arguments, whereas for non-uniform balanced hypergraphs we show that the f-factor problem is NP-hard. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-22 KW - perfect f-matchings in hypergraphs KW - f-factors in hypergraphs KW - mengerian hypergraph KW - balanced hypergraph KW - perfect hypergraph KW - Hall's Theorem Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-59071 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Blanco, Marco A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Hoang, Nam-Dung A1 - Kaier, Anton A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Schlobach, Swen T1 - The Shortest Path Problem with Crossing Costs N2 - We introduce the shortest path problem with crossing costs (SPPCC), a shortest path problem in a directed graph, in which the objective function is the sum of arc weights and crossing costs. The former are independently paid for each arc used by the path, the latter need to be paid every time the path intersects certain sets of arcs, which we call regions. The SPPCC generalizes not only the classical shortest path problem but also variants such as the resource constrained shortest path problem and the minimum label path problem. We use the SPPCC to model the flight trajectory optimization problem with overflight costs. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the problem. In particular, we identify efficient exact and approximation algorithms for the cases that are most relevant in practice. T3 - ZIB-Report - 16-70 Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-61240 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Beckenbach, Isabel A1 - Peis, Britta A1 - Schaudt, Oliver A1 - Scheidweiler, Robert T1 - A Combinatorial Proof of a König-type Theorem for Unimodular Hypergraphs N2 - We state purely combinatorial proofs for König- and Hall-type theorems for a wide class of combinatorial optimization problems. Our methods rely on relaxations of the matching and vertex cover problem and, moreover, on the strong coloring properties admitted by bipartite graphs and their generalizations. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-27 KW - Packing KW - Covering KW - Total Unimodularity KW - König's Theorem KW - Factors Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64017 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Grimm, Boris A1 - Borndörfer, Ralf A1 - Reuther, Markus A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - A Propagation Approach to Acyclic Rolling Stock Rotation Optimization N2 - The rolling stock, i.e., railway vehicles, are one of the key ingredients of a running railway system. As it is well known, the offer of a railway company to their customers, i.e., the railway timetable, changes from time to time. Typical reasons for that are different timetables associated with different seasons, maintenance periods or holidays. Therefore, the regular lifetime of a timetable is split into (more or less) irregular periods where parts of the timetable are changed. In order to operate a railway timetable most railway companies set up sequences that define the operation of timetabled trips by a single physical railway vehicle called (rolling stock) rotations. Not surprisingly, the individual parts of a timetable also affect the rotations. More precisely, each of the parts brings up an acyclic rolling stock rotation problem with start and end conditions associated with the beginning and ending of the corresponding period. In this paper, we propose a propagation approach to deal with large planning horizons that are composed of many timetables with shorter individual lifetimes. The approach is based on an integer linear programming formulation that propagates rolling stock rotations through the irregular parts of the timetable while taking a large variety of operational requirements into account. This approach is implemented within the rolling stock rotation optimization framework ROTOR used by DB Fernverkehr AG, one of the leading railway operators in Europe. Computational results for real world scenarios are presented to evaluate the approach. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-24 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-63930 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Fischer, Frank A1 - Schlechte, Thomas T1 - Strong Relaxations for the Train Timetabling Problem using Connected Configurations N2 - The task of the train timetabling problem or track allocation problem is to find conflict free schedules for a set of trains with predefined routes in a railway network. Especially for non-periodic instances models based on time expanded networks are often used. Unfortunately, the linear programming relaxation of these models is often extremely weak because these models do not describe combinatorial relations like overtaking possibilities very well. In this paper we extend the model by so called connected configuration subproblems. These subproblems perfectly describe feasible schedules of a small subset of trains (2-3) on consecutive track segments. In a Lagrangian relaxation approach we solve several of these subproblems together in order to produce solutions which consist of combinatorially compatible schedules along the track segments. The computational results on a mostly single track corridor taken from the INFORMS RAS Problem Solving Competition 2012 data indicate that our new solution approach is rather strong. Indeed, for this instance the solution of the Lagrangian relaxation is already integral. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-46 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64743 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schade, Stanley A1 - Schlechte, Thomas A1 - Witzig, Jakob T1 - Structure-based Decomposition for Pattern-Detection for Railway Timetables N2 - We consider the problem of pattern detection in large scale railway timetables. This problem arises in rolling stock optimization planning in order to identify invariant sections of the timetable for which a cyclic rotation plan is adequate. We propose a dual reduction technique which leads to an decomposition and enumeration method. Computational results for real world instances demonstrate that the method is able to produce optimal solutions as fast as standard MIP solvers. T3 - ZIB-Report - 17-40 Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64525 SN - 1438-0064 ER -