Efficient Decision-Making for Rail Freight Operators: A Real-Time IoT-Based Approach for Rake Rescheduling

Railway organizations are currently engaged in the pursuit of digitalizing rail freight transportation to optimize resource utilization and increase revenue. The use of IoT technology combined with real-time information enables train management systems to provide accurate GPS data. However, freight transport operators frequently encounter the challenge of rescheduling freight trains in real-time without the aid of a decision-making system. To overcome this obstacle, an IoT-based real-time rake schedular-reschedular heuristic has been developed. Computational studies have demonstrated that this heuristic is both efficient in terms of runtime and produces high-quality solutions. The implementation of this approach would enable freight transport operators to optimize their business operations, increase their monthly revenue, and re-schedule their rakes efficiently.