The Question
Case study · Rail · Weekly operating plan
Client's brief · reconstructed excerpt · values held in confidence
(withheld) runs a freight railway that links its loading facilities to its unloading points, with train maintenance closing each cycle. Every week, planners and controllers set the plan for the next two weeks to three months: which trains run, where they meet, when equipment comes out for maintenance, and which crews work each train. Separate tools answer each piece. A meet-pass planner handles train meets, production planning estimates loading and unloading times, and resource tools track crew availability. None of them shows how one change plays out across the rest, and the railway wants to check the whole plan at the weekly meeting before the week runs.
Bars cover values SimWell holds and is not releasing. The released figures stand as printed.
§ 1
Each tool answers one question well. The plan fails where the answers touch: a slow loading shifts a meet, the shifted meet cuts into a maintenance window, and the crew assigned to the train is now needed somewhere else. With similar trains on a single-track line, delays come almost entirely from meets, so a small timing change at one end of the line travels to the other.
§ 2
The full cycle, at uneven depth. The railway itself, track and meets included, runs in full detail. Loading, unloading, maintenance, and resource management run as simplified versions, enough to keep the cycle closed and visible without modeling the whole operation at once.
Representative model. Trains, times, and track are illustrative, not client data.
§ 3
SimWell built it in stages. The client needed a partial tool in the short term and did not want a single large build that could be obsolete on delivery. SimWell delivered the railway and its connected operations first, put that version in front of the weekly meeting, then added detail to the adjacent operations as needs surfaced. Requirements shifted during development as the railway itself changed, and the build shifted with them.
§ 4
Any version of the coming weeks: more or fewer trains, a moved maintenance window, a crew change, a slow loading day. Scenarios run in seconds and return the measures planners already used, plus new views built from data the railway held but could not use.
Cleared for release
The weekly plan now gets checked against the full cycle before it runs. After the first deliverable, the client judged the tool on the right path and asked SimWell to keep going.
The next phases widen the scope across the railway and the operations feeding and receiving it, and add optimization of the full chain.
SimWell helps operators make better decisions under uncertainty. We build simulation and optimization models that reflect operational reality, test scenarios before committing resources, and transfer capability so teams can run decisions independently.
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