4 Presentations

• 
  01:30 PM - 01:55 PM

  Élaboration de stratégies de triage et de transport forêt‐usines et cadre conceptuel

  • Mohamed Dhia Eddine Baccouche, presenter, Université Laval

  Le triage et le transport du bois représentent une part importante du coût opérationnel de l’industrie forestière ce qui nécessite l’organisation de ces opérations. Notre projet explorera diverses stratégies de triage du bois en forêt afin de mieux coordonner l’approvisionnement en bois avec les besoins spécifiques des usines à desservir. L’amélioration de l’efficacité des stratégies nécessite d’étudier les facteurs influençant le flux de matière. La modélisation du réseau logistique est nécessaire pour trouver la façon typique de gérer le triage et le transport à l’intérieur d’un tel réseau, permettant ainsi d’améliorer la profitabilité des stratégies. Les hypothèses de modélisation ont été formulées et un modèle mathématique a été élaboré, faisant appel à la programmation mathématique pour évaluer la profitabilité. Les façons de couper le bois en forêt seront notamment examinées dans le but d’identifier la bonne stratégie permettant de maximiser la valeur générée. L’expérimentation des scénarios nous servira à minimiser les échanges de bois entres les scieries. Ces scénarios permettent de valider nos hypothèses et d’évaluer la profitabilité et l’impact environnemental des stratégies à adopter.

• 
  01:55 PM - 02:20 PM

  Environmental sustainably in rail-road transportation planning considering disruption risk

  • Asefeh Hassani Goodarzi, presenter, Département de génie des systems, École de technologie supérieure
  • Armin Jabbarzadeh, Département de génie des systems, École de technologie supérieure
  • Marc Paquet, École de technologie supérieure

  With the rapid growth of the transportation industry, environmental and social concerns have been increasingly raised, as freight transportation is mainly driven by fossil fuel, resulting in emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and other negative externalities. Multi-modal transport (i.e. transferring freight from its origin to the destination using more than one mode of transport) can be considered as a promising solution to reduce these negative impacts, by shifting freight flows from road to rail, which is a more eco-friendly mode.
  The vulnerability of multimodal networks to random disruptions though requires resilient planning of such systems. Natural disasters (e.g. floods), unforeseen events, and disrupting operations may cause a delay, plan cancellation, re-planning, and ultimately efficiency reduction in multimodal systems. This study, therefore, focuses on developing an optimization approach for resilient and sustainable planning of rail-road transport systems at the tactical level. Two dimensions of sustainability including environmental, and economic aspects are addressed through a mathematical formulation which is solved using Gurobi optimizer.

• 
  02:20 PM - 02:45 PM

  Optimizing rolling stock for passenger rail operations at GIRO

  • Anne Mercier, presenter, GIRO

  The rolling stock scheduling problem involves several objectives and constraints to ensure an efficient use of costly resources. Train units can be coupled or uncoupled into compositions of different capacities that should match expected passenger demand. Shortages for passengers should be minimized, as well as the operating cost that is comprised of factors such as unit mileage, excessive layover time and unnecessary shunting operations. We will show how to use column-generation algorithms to first generate sets of minimum cost vehicle tasks taking into account rail infrastructure, yard capacities, vehicle requirements and other operational rules and how to link the vehicle tasks to form multi-week vehicle rosters respecting maintenance plans.

• 
  02:45 PM - 03:10 PM

  Truck platooning transportation planning in the forestry sector

  • Saba Gazran, presenter, École de technologie supérieure
  • Tasseda Boukherroub, École de technologie supérieure
  • Mikael Rönnqvist, Université Laval
  • Marc Paquet, École de technologie supérieure

  Truck platooning is an emerging technology in the area of autonomous vehicles. The main advantage is cost savings due to the reduction in the number of drivers required and fuel consumption (depending on the level of automation). The forest products industry, where transportation cost is high and which is facing human driver shortage, could benefit from this technology in the future. This study proposes an optimization model to efficiently integrate truck platoons with ordinary trucks in transportation planning. The transportation network considered includes multiple products, harvest areas, terminals, and mills. We consider hybrid truck platooning where only one human driver is at the wheel of the leading truck of the platoon. Decisions to be made include direct and backhaul route selection, terminal location, the number of ordinary and platoon trucks needed, and product flows in the network. Various scenarios are analyzed to identify under which conditions the transportation plan is cost-efficient when introducing truck platoons into the network. Different instances are used to solve the model. According to the results and depending on the scenarios, the cost savings and reductions in required drivers are in the range of 1 to more than 20%, and 3 to more than 30%, respectively.