Revenue management method and critical techniques of railway passenger transport

Purpose–Revenue management(RM)is a significant technique to improve revenue with limited resources.With the macro environment of dramatically increasing transit capacity and rapid railway transport development in China,it is necessary to involve the theory of RM into the operation and decision of railway passenger transport.Design/methodology/approach–This paper proposes the theory and framework of generalized RM of railway passenger transport(RMRPT),and the thoughts and methods of the main techniques in RMRPT,involving demand forecasting,line planning,inventory control,pricing strategies and information systems,are all studied and elaborated.The involved methods and techniques provide a sequential process to help with the decision-making for each stage of RMRPT.The corresponding techniques are integrated into the information system to support practical businesses in railway passenger transport.Findings–The combination of the whole techniques devotes to railway benefit improvement and transit resource utilization and has been applied into the practical operation and organization of railway passenger transport.Originality/value–The development of RMRPT would provide theoretical and technical support for the improvement of service quality as well as railway benefits and efficiency.

A two-layer optimization model for high-speed railway line planning

Line planning is the first important strategic element in the railway operation planning process,which will directly affect the successive planning to determine the efficiency of the whole railway system.A two-layer optimization model is proposed within a simulation framework to deal with the high-speed railway (HSR) line planning problem.In the model,the top layer aims at achieving an optimal stop-schedule set with the service frequencies,and is formulated as a nonlinear program,solved by genetic algorithm.The objective of top layer is tominimize the total operation cost and unserved passenger volume.Given a specific stop-schedule,the bottom layer focuses on weighted passenger flow assignment,formulated as a mixed integer program with the objective of maximizing the served passenger volume andminimizing the total travel time for all passengers.The case study on Taiwan HSR shows that the proposed two-layer model is better than the existing techniques.In addition,this model is also illustrated with the Beijing-Shanghai HSR in China.The result shows that the two-layer optimization model can reduce computation complexity and that an optimal set of stop-schedules can always be generated with less calculation time.

Virtual simulation of production line for ergonomics evaluation

To avoid ergonomic problems in the early planning stages of a production line and achieve more satisfactory planning and design, ergonomic simulation is particularly important in digital production line planning. An ergonomics analysis method is presented by using two theories： Ovako working posture analysis system （OWAS） and Burandt-Schultetus hand-arm force analysis （BSHA）. The processes of ergonomics analysis and simulation are discussed based on a platform of process simulation and process designer. As an example, the paper shows how ergonomics problems are considered in production line planning to make a better choice between different production line planning schemes.