- Artificial intelligence to ensure loading optimisation in Combined Transport

(Berlin/Frankfurt am Main, 1st December 2022) A new digitalisation project in Combined Transport is to accelerate the assignment of intermodal loading units to rail wagons. How the loading units are transferred onto the wagon will be optimised with the aid of suitable calculation processes and the use of methods from the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. The KIBA project investigating artificial intelligence and discrete loading optimisation models to boost capacity utilisation in Combined Transport launched at the beginning of September 2022. Federal minister Volker Wissing presented the funding certificate to the project team in the Ministry for Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMDV) in Berlin last Friday and wished them a successful start to the IT project, which his ministry is supporting to the tune of 2.34 million euros over three years as part of the “Artificial intelligence in mobility” innovation campaign. Participants alongside project coordinator Kombiverkehr Deutsche Gesellschaft für kombinierten Güterverkehr mbH & Co. KG include project partners Darmstadt Technical University, Deutsche Umschlaggesellschaft Schiene-Straße (DUSS) mbH, Goethe University Frankfurt, VTG Rail Europe GmbH, INFORM GmbH and KombiConsult GmbH.

Continental Combined Transport is characterised by enormous heterogeneity in the types of loading unit and the rail wagons used. The great challenge is therefore to determine how assignment of the loading units to the wagons can be appropriately optimised on the basis of various objective criteria. In addition to the static characteristics of the semi-trailers, containers and swap bodies in their different designs and rail wagons on the one side, variable parameters such as the actual weight, the type of payload and the timetable also play a significant role on the other. The aim of the project is for every enquiry about transferring a loading unit to be answered with a proposal for the optimum placement of the unit on a wagon formation within the shortest possible time – and this even before all the information about which other loading units for the same departure/destination route will still arrive at the terminal up to departure. The AI-assisted loading optimisation is intended to further enhance capacity management for intermodal operators with their extensive networks.

Caption: Federal Transport and Digital Infrastructure minister Volker Wissing presented the funding certificates to the participants in the KIBA project in Berlin.

The press photo can be downloaded here.
 

Contact for further information about the KIBA project:

Project Coordination

Kombiverkehr GmbH & Co. KG

Christoph Büchner, Manager IT

Phone +49 69/79505-144, email cbuechner@kombiverkehr.de

About the BMDV’s AI funding programme

The BMDV is funding the development and trialling across all forms of transport of innovative technologies which support or enable intelligent mobility. Many of these applications are doing so by exploring the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Further information can be found at www.bmdv.bund.de.