Reducing Wagon Turnaround Times by redesigning the outbound dispatch operations of a steel plant

Dispatch of steel products by railways from the mills of an integrated steel plant, producing variety of products is a complex process with a constraint of strictly adhering to the permissible Wagon Turnaround Times (WTT). This operation faces further challenges when the WTT is proposed to be brought down by 75% while additional mills are being added for capacity expansion. This paper presents how reengineering of the dispatch operations using simulation helped in reducing the WTT to the desired level. Our approach was to use a flexible push-pull based dispatch scheduling instead of the current pull and wait model. Our recommendations included decoupling railways operations from the internal mills thereby avoiding wagon set breaks and reassembly, investing in optimum number of captive locomotives and wagon sets, scheduling mechanism for captive locomotives, creation of an intermediate storage to stack products according to dispatch schedules and ensuring just-in-time material availability for dispatch.