A BPMN model of rail port operations to evaluate potential capacity increase

The rapid growth of container movements deriving from the advent of globalization has caused a relevant pressure on ports. In this context, the port efficiency performances requested by the market have been met by an increased adoption of railway transport. Despite its environmental and economic sustainability, this intermodal transport solution is characterized by a high degree of complexity given by the execution of different activities and the involvement of several stakeholders. As such, the need of deeply analyzing logistics business processes has led to the embracement of modeling techniques, which allow practitioners to identify possible criticalities along the chain. In this regard, the selection of the appropriate modeling method and notation definitely influences the results of the process examination. In the present paper, the train departure process in the Port of Trieste, Italy, has been investigated in terms of information flows: to that end, the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) standard has been used. On one hand, this task has enabled to clarify the documentary procedure occurring in diverse operational scenarios and, on the other hand, it has allowed also to recognize the process bottlenecks which hinder an increase in the railway traffic volume. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis concerning the terminal and gateway capacity, before and after the implementation of a technological intervention, has demonstrated the possible growth of train flows by modifying the process only at the organizational level. These accomplishments have proved to port managers the usefulness of applying a theoretical graphical representation to a practical transport process.