TIMIPLAN: A Tool for Transportation Tasks

Multi-modal transportation is a logistics problem in which a set of goods has to be transported to different places, with the combination of at least two modes of transport, without a change of container for the goods. In such tasks, in many cases, the decisions are inefficiently made by human operators. Human operators receive plenty of information from several and varied sources, and thus they suffer from information overload. To solve efficiently the multi-modal transportation problem, the management cannot rely only on the experience of the human operators. A prospective way to tackle the complexity of the problem for multi-modal transportation is to apply the concept of autonomic behavior. The goal of this chapter is to describe timiplan, a software tool that solves multi-modal transportation problems developed in cooperation with the Spanish company Acciona Transmediterranea. The tool includes a solver that combines linear programming (LP) with automated planning (AP) techniques. To facilitate its integration in the company, the application follows a mixed-initiative approach allowing the users to modify the plans provided by the planning module. The system also integrates an execution component that monitors the execution, keeping track of failures and replanning if necessary. Thus, timiplan showcases some of the needed autonomic objectives for self-management in future software applied to road transport software system.