The volume of freight transportation has globally grown over the past decades. However, not all modes of transport are benefiting equally from this growth. The transport performance of rail freight in particular has stagnated in recent years. On the other hand, rail-bound freight transport has both ecological and economic advantages, especially on open routes. For this trains have to be shunted at the source of transport or disbanded in the sink. These shunting activities take place in shunting yards and are usually very personnel-, cost- and timeintensive, which hurts the entire rail-based logistics value chain in terms of economic efficiency. Therefore, this paper discusses both the current challenges of rail-bound freight transportation and its potentials arising from digitization and automation. In addition, we propose a conceptualization of information and communication technology components in an automated shunting system, including their functionalities, quality measures and challenges. Finally, a project-related implementation of automated shunting is presented.