Positioning of loading units in a transshipment yard storage area

This paper considers a decision problem as it arises in a rail–road transshipment yard when unloading a bundle of trains. The loading units, e.g. containers, arriving on trains and occasionally arriving on trucks have to be placed on storage lanes of limited capacity. Loading units are placed and removed keeping stacking and crane rail moves small. We present two NP-hard models and some heuristics for solving the problem. One of these heuristics is currently applied at the yard. The algorithms are then tested using real-life data.