SpotIn

Combined road/rail freight transportation (CT) provides different possibilities to relieve the capacity on the road and is more climate-friendly and cost-effective than road freight transportation. However, one of the most significant disadvantages of CT is interface loss occurring while handling road carriers. Thereby, long waiting times arise at the terminals. They are caused, for example, by delays during shunting or craning of preceding load carriers. They commit resources and personnel of the freight forwarders in CT, especially small and medium-sized ones, leading to high opportunity costs.

Nevertheless, by using small, powerful tractors, so-called spotters, to move and maneuver load carriers, the processes of delivery and pickup at the terminal by freight forwarders and the loading activities at the transshipment terminal can be separated. This reduces interface losses, whereas additional acquisition and process costs arise. Therefore, the implementation of spotters has to be analyzed depending on the frameworks. Today, these costs and the long-term benefits of implementing spotters, which are challenging to quantify, keep many terminal operators from implementation, even though their use would correlate with greater efficiency.

The project aims to evaluate the potential of spotters for different configurations (e. g., the number of transfer points, transfer time, available parking space, complexity of traffic routing such as the number of intersections) and the requirements at transshipment terminals (e. g., handling volume, type of load carriers, length and distribution of delivery time windows). Therefore, an evidence-based, novel decision support tool should be developed to help identify framework conditions under which spotters should be deployed. At the same time, it should be considered how the use of spotters can be designed for the future. In addition to classic spotters, statements can also be made regarding autonomously driving spotters.

This project is a collaboration project with the chair of “Management Science / Operations Research” of TU Darmstadt.