Circle Spa is a consulting company for management and processes, innovative technological solutions in the port, intermodal and logistics field. Their high participation in European projects allows them to have a deep knowledge and to make significant headway like the current implementation case.
The Port Rail Shunting Optimization System is the result of collecting the outcomes of an R&D project and implementing them in a CEF one.
The innovation project from which the idea comes is TEBETS, an Italian R&D project within the national competence centre on critical infrastructure. This project, which is an acronym for Technological Boost for Efficient port Terminal operations following safety-related events, supported the design of a Digital Twin that was also applied in the CEF e-BRIDGE project in a logistic node (shunting area in a port), speeding up the implementation phase and provided the right consolidations/refinements until arriving the current pilot phase.
As a member of both projects, Circle enabled the transfer of knowledge and facilitated the subsequent development: a digital platform consisting of a system composed by a Decision Support Systems Tool and a Digital Twin. They also collaborated in the elaboration of this document by confirming its case and providing further information.
The solution developed is a Decision Support System for helping and supporting the planning and the management of rail shunting operations within the port area. This part focuses of the ports freight transfer made from the railway station to the maritime terminals, and vice versa. It consists of a scheduling module which finds the best starting and ending time for each considered shunting operation of every train to manage, and a re-scheduling module for unpredictable events such as delays.
The logical processes of those two modules are shown in the following figure, which provides an updated plan:
Figure 1. Port Rail Shunting Optimization Tool – logical process[1]
This optimisation tool is already deployed for the “scheduling” in an integrated manner with the software used by the shunting operator in the port of Genova. Currently, this module is in test & pilot phase. In the next months will be extended to the “rescheduling”.
On the other hand, the Digital Twin is developed for visualizing railroad shunting operations using discrete events of which we are aware as input. It can be made available to different process operators for simulating and monitoring the state of the infrastructure over time. It uses Stop and Regression Points on the Geographic Information System (GIS) map.
It is a part of the overall optimization of the shunting node, coupling simulation with real time information in terms of replanning the planned operation based on real time info coming from ground.
Along with the tool, it is built for the shunting area of the port of Genova. Even the simulation part is already working, and the system is prepared for the real time feedback from the ground, this is still not available. Therefore, this part is not concluded, and it will be finalized when real time data is available.
A key success factor for this solution was definitely having a specific and deep knowledge of the processes. Nevertheless, knowing the main operators of the chain/process and having a collaborative and cooperative modality of work also helped, as well as the context in which both the project and the solution were developed, with the rail transport mode being in a growth phase.
From the above, it is also possible to identify three main beneficiaries of the of platform: The Port Authority, for testing and taking strategic/tactic decisions and for monitoring the infrastructure; the Shunting Manager, for having a support in the organization of the activities; and the Maritime Terminal operators, for collaborating in the research of the optimal efficiency of the port system and for visualizing the infrastructure state.
According to the solution owner, the main pain point faced while generating this solution was involving different stakeholders with a not full digitalized management of activities. A simplification of the process was needed in order model in an optimization approach only the main aspects while taking into consideration the necessities of all the stakeholders. In parallel, another pain point was the specific context in which some innovations and supports provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) are still difficult to completely comprehend and accept.
On the other hand, by focusing on the expected positive impacts, improvements in both the optimization and programming of operations are achieved. A more detailed list of expected effects is provided bellow:
· Support for the prior sizing of resources needed to perform the service;
· Support for the scheduling of activities;
· Assignment of available resources to scheduled activities in order to regularly perform the service;
· Real-time re-scheduling to better address the management of extraordinary operations and unpredictable events;
· System status monitoring.
All these benefits contribute to pursue the increase of the rail transport mode share while reducing the road one, and then the negative externalities that it involves, both in port contexts, in port cities, and, in general, in the territories.
Therefore, even though the current market is Italy, considering the benefits abovementioned, it is expected that the potential clients will extend to the whole of Europe.