Scheduling railway freight cars

It is difficult to allocate the freight cars and to determine how to load the several varieties of goods into them. In order to improve efficiency, a knowledge-based system (KBS) is developed and integrated into the existing railway information system. This paper introduces the development of the system and the framework in which the KBS are integrated into the existing system environments. Under the framework, the combination of logic programming technology and database technology provides us with a practical way to solve the problems in many existing information systems. Meanwhile, developing the KBS as a distributed application benefits both the organization and users. The existing centralized database management system was maintained, and the security and the control of the database were ensured. Users can obtain the performance of a workstation with the transparency of data location in a user-friendly environment. At last, the implementation of the KBS for railway freight loading is discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.