Home Archive Transforming an Iron-Age Industry with Automated Prediction Technology Michael Hackney, VP of Products It’s painfully obvious that railroads depend on the predictable operation of their trains. Unanticipated delays cost money, create safety and security concerns, create negative customer sentiment, lost cargo (perishable items) and can even result in fines. Locomotive manufacturers and railroads have invested heavily in sophisticated on-board monitoring and analytics to manage the performance and maintenance of these multi-million dollar investments. But delays due to wayside equipment failures like switch machines, track circuits or hotbox detectors can just as effectively stop trains cold in their tracks. Like a chain, railroads are only as strong as their weakest link. Wayside equipment is often overlooked and remains a key contributor to unanticipated delays. For example, our Class 1 Railroad customers tell us that switch machines and hotbox detector failures are at the top of the list for unanticipated delays due to equipment failure. Read More... MAR. 24 2016 #RAILCOMM #RAILCOMM INSIGHT #PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS #CONDITION BASED MAINTENANCE #REMOTE CONDITION MONITORING Consider This Before Switching to a Computer-Based Train Control System (Part 1) Paola Realpozo, Director of Marketing March 9, 2016 Moving from a manual to computer-based train control system is an inevitable reality that railroads will all soon face. Increased traffic volumes and higher velocity targets have been key drivers to rethinking the way railroads move trains today. But far more important than operational metrics, is the safe movement of trains, unfortunately manual methods, like paper train sheets or simple spreadsheet-based methods, do not reduce the potential for human error putting trains and their crews at risk. When a railroad is ready to switch from a manual, paper-based dispatch method to a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, the capital investment is not the only thing that has to be considered. Other factors such as selecting the right vendor/partner are as critical when evaluating solutions. After implementing several dispatch systems across the continent, here are some points to consider if your railroad is planning to implement a CAD system. Read More... MAR. 9 2016 #RAILCOMM #DISPATCH #TRAIN CONTROL #COMPUTER-AIDED DISPATCH #CAD #RAILCOMM DOC Why Railroads Must and Will Embrace the Cloud Joe Forgione, President & CEO February 12, 2016 As technology has evolved in the last decades, so has the railroad industry begun to value the importance of using information technology as a competitive advantage. Whether it is a computer-aided dispatching system (CAD) to automate train movement and schedules or sophisticated control systems to automate previously manual tasks such as switching in yards. While there have been pockets of so called “back-office” information systems in railroads for decades (for example, crew scheduling and asset management), railroads haven’t automated to the extent of many other industries. The reason for this has to be the unique economic model of railroads and the disproportionate reliance on capital to run their operations. Leading the pack toward the strategic use of information technology have been more information intensive industries such as financial services, health care, and even retail. Consequently these industries had the need to embrace leading technologies, such as “the cloud”, many years ago. In fact, some of the objections that I am now hearing from the top railroads regarding the use of the cloud are the same as I heard from these other industries a decade or more ago. Some of the classic objections are: Read More... FEB. 12 2016 #RAILCOMM #CLOUD #SAAS #RAILROAD #ONPREMISE 1 NOTE Best Practices to Achieving System Installation Success Andy Kunzmann, CTO January 19, 2016 How many times a project is considered to be completed, but then all of a sudden on day 1 of field testing the system doesn’t work? You try to go back and figure out where the implementation failed, only to realize that things are not installed according to plan, or that documentation doesn’t match the final design, and you are lost. Technology projects in a capital intensive industry, especially projects that involve the installation of equipment in a harsh environment, like the railroad, require great attention to detail and effective project management practices. I recently had the opportunity to work in the field during the installation of our car tracking system. It was a good reminder of why the role of a good plan, documentation, and communication is so important to the successful implementation of a system. It was also a good reminder that a lot of work and effort happens behind the scenes but is key to achieving success in the short and long term. Understanding some of the best practices to achieving system installation success, will make it easier for your team and your customer to plan a schedule of values that supports the project scope of work. Read More... JAN. 19 2016 #RAILCOMM #CAR TRACKING #RAIL #PROJECT MANAGEMENT #BEST PRACTICES #YARD AUTOMATION #DOCUMENTATION 5 Ways to Prove your Brand Paola Realpozo, Director of Marketing January 6, 2016 It is not news that in capital intensive and safety critical industries, proven solutions and trustworthy brands are more attractive to customers than cool and innovative products alone. As the 280 Group would suggest in its Product Management ‘PM Tip of the Day’, “you compete with other companies, not just their #products. Company strengths and weaknesses do matter.” Having worked in the rail industry for many years on the railroad side as well as the supplier side, and having interacted with many different companies, it is clear that in an industry that is relatively small in number of players, and big in number of opportunities, proving yourself as a trusted brand is key to survival and it requires hard work. When you have a strong, well-positioned brand that has been around for 30, 50 or 100 years, it might be easier to get your foot in the customers’ door, but it is a different story for a young company that has a long way to go to prove itself, its competencies and products. So how can companies achieve the “trusted partner” badge? Here are 5 ways that can positively impact the position of your brand: Read More... JAN. 6 2016 #RAILCOMM #BRAND #RAIL #CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS #TRUSTED PARTNER #SALES #MARKETING The Importance of Using the Right Metric for the Right Analysis Joe Forgione, President & CEO December 16, 2015 The railroad industry is very metric driven. Throughout the history of railroading numbers have been critical to the operation and measurement of the industry. In fact, it was the railroad industry that created “standard time” zones so that trains moving across the continent would have a common time reference upon which to base schedules. Today the key metrics have to do with how to measure the overall productivity of the railroad. The overriding financial measurement by which financial analysts measure a railroad is operating ratio. The operating ratio is essentially the inverse of operating margin, lower is better, and is how the railroad efficiently uses its fixed assets to generate profit. The important operating metrics driving that top level metric are train speed or velocity, throughput, and dwell time. The speed or velocity metric is important because trains are about moving as many goods as quickly as possible between destinations. Since it is very costly to add more capacity to the existing track infrastructure, maximizing efficiency of the existing infrastructure is of paramount importance to railroads. The more that is moved as fast as possible means more revenue over a shorter period of time. Dwell time is typically associated with trains that are not moving in terminals or yards. A sitting train is an expensive asset that is not generating revenue, so very low dwell times are preferred. Like a power plant not generating electricity or an automobile plant not producing cars, an idle train is not good. Read More... DEC. 16 2015 #RAILROAD #SPEED #VELOCITY #ANALYTICS #RAILCOMM #DWELL TIME #PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS #THROUGHPUT A Short Primer on Data and Analytics Michael Hackney, VP Products December 7, 2015 In early October, I attended the Railway Interchange 2015 trade show in Minneapolis to help launch RailComm InsightTM, our new smart monitoring and analytics platform. I met with dozens of rail executives and railroad technologists - and even a few competitors - interested in learning about our platform and rail analytics in general. After the first few demos and discussions I began to realize that there is some misunderstanding of data and analytics in the rail industry. For example, after seeing a demo of Insight’s predictive analytics for mainline switch machines, an executive from one of the Class I railroads commented “We have that data, why do we need Insight?” After a bit of probing to better understand his question, I realized that he (and to be fair, quite a few other visitors to our booth) had a bit of a knowledge gap when it came to data and analytics. This is not unique to the rail industry either, for some reason these simple concepts are not well understood by many. This post is a simple primer intended to clarify these concepts and set the stage for future posts on analytics for the railroad industry. By definition, data is simply a collection of facts or information. Without some form of analysis (e.g. analytics), data is not very useful and certainly isn’t actionable. By comparison, analytics are the systematic analysis of data with the purpose of drawing conclusions to help organizations (in this case, railroads) make better business decisions. I could leave it at that but the story is actually a little more interesting. In the world of analytics, there are four commonly agreed upon types of analytics: Read More... DEC. 7 2015 #RAILCOMM #PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS #RAILCOMM INSIGHT #RAILROAD #DATA #ANALYTICS Are You Melting Snow Efficiently? Brian Denny, Associate Product Marketing Jan 13, 2015 Every winter, many freight railroads and transit agencies are required to deal with snow around switch points and third rail to keep their operations moving. For an operation that uses manually controlled heaters this means that rail workers are required to travel to each individual switch point or 3rd rail heater cabinet to activate the heaters. This typically will occur far in advance of the first snow or ice storm so the company can be assured winter conditions do not cause train delays. Often these heaters will remain running until winter is over. While this method of running heaters throughout the winter is effective – it is also very inefficient. Every minute a switch heater is running past the point where it is actively melting snow/ice is contributing to increased daily operating costs. Read More... JAN. 13 2015 #HEATER #RAILWAY #THIRD RAIL #SWITCH #MACHINE #SNOW #ENERGY #SAVINGS #ROI #RAILCOMM 1 NOTE FIVE REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD CHOOSE SAAS Michael Penza, VP of Research & Development May 20, 2014 Companies typically have two options when it comes to purchasing software. The traditional method is to purchase the software outright and run it on-premises. However, more and more software suppliers are offering their software using the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. At RailComm, we offer our mission-critical railroad operations software under both models. Having offered both models for the past decade, we have had the opportunity to witness the growing trend towards SaaS; this is because the SaaS model offers our customers a more complete solution and better value. UPFRONT COSTS ARE ELIMINATED With the traditional method of purchasing software outright, there are generally large upfront costs. Companies purchase expensive perpetual software licenses, expensive servers to run the software, and then frequently have to hire additional IT personnel to maintain and support the system. With the SaaS model these upfront cost are eliminated and the company simply pays a monthly subscription fee to access the software. Read More... MAY. 21 2014 #SAAS #ON-PREMISES #RAILCOMM #BENEFITS #AVAILABILITY #TECHNOLOGY AUTOMATING THE BLUE FLAG PROTECTION PROCESS by Paola Realpozo, Director of Marketing February 28,2014 SAFETY FIRST Whether on a mainline re-fueling facility or within a rail yard, safety of workers and protection of assets is key to any company that moves, maintains, fuels or inspects cars and locomotives. During inspection and maintenance of rolling stock, workers are potentially exposed to unexpected train movements and other hazards that could lead to fatalities. BLUE MEANS “STOP” The Federal Railroad Association has developed standards for the protection of workers for years, and the “blue flag” has become the standard way to indicate that a worker is currently working on a piece of equipment that is not to be moved, and that no equipment may come within 150 ft of the blue flag (or 50 ft in the yard). There are many rules and regulations that exist for the different conditions under which a blue flag must be displayed, however one thing is consistent in the North American rail industry: blue means “stop” and is designated as a blue flag protection condition. AUTOMATING THE BLUE FLAGGING PROCESS Since today’s practice may include the application of mechanical protection such as derails applied and switches lined and locked away from the protected track, in addition to the placement of a blue flag indicator, the process of applying blue flag protection is a lengthy one that may expose employees to potential injuries while manually operating the equipment. Read More... FEB. 28 2014 1 NOTE Home Archive OBSERVER THEME BY ZACK SULTAN