Articles
Real-Time Asset Management For Railroad Freight: The RFTrax Opportunity
November 6, 2006
•White Paper: Real-time Asset Management
The railroad industry is now at a crossroads that impacts not just the railroad operators, but also the manufacturers and shippers that depend on rail transportation to deliver spare parts and finished goods across the continent. The renaissance of the railroad as a key element in the freight transportation infrastructure has highlighted the need to better manage the transportation of goods by rail.
At issue is an on-going problem: The state-of-the-art in tracking and managing key rolling assets – railcars, tankers, and locomotives – lags far behind other highly capitalized, mission-critical industries. Loss and damage as a percent of revenue have remained largely unchanged in the industry in 20 years, while just-in-time requirements have significantly increased the number of freight cars in use, even as overall dwell times have gone up for most operators. Security is another concern: the 1.7 million hazmat shipments sent by rail each year are largely unmonitored, despite increasing calls for the industry to improve its security profile. Fuel prices and faster time-to-market requirements are also driving a need to better manage the 1.6 million railcars in use in the United States.
An important model for improving the management of railroad assets can be seen by looking at the efficiencies that manufacturers have been able to achieve by marrying shop floor, or MES, data with their back-office ERP systems. The return on investment at this level of integration has been significant for manufacturers. Similarly, tapping into data at the boxcar, tanker, and locomotive level concerning loading, transit, and unloading, could provide a wealth of information similar to the information that MES systems have traditionally provided to manufacturers. Integrating those data with ERP and equivalent systems could provide a windfall of information for improving the efficiency and profitability for all concerned.
Click Here To Download:•White Paper: Real-time Asset Management
