Simulating Army Rail Yard Operations at the Port of Bremerhaven

Abstract

To maintain the United States military’s capability to deploy rapidly across the globe, logistical planning tools, simulations, and models enhance leaders’ decision making abilities. This research develops a discrete event model designed to simulate military operations within a railyard in order to support the Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) Planning Logistics Analysis Network System (PLANS). The research team chose the Port of Bremerhaven, Germany as a case study due to its relevance to current military operations, granting us access to timely data and stakeholders with recent operational experience. The discrete event simulation (DES) utilizes stochastic processes and multiple layouts in order to analyze the amount of time it takes to move varying amounts of cargo and vehicles and identify potential bottlenecks in the operation.