Speech of Leonid Osminin, Business Analyst of Digital Design Company presented at Green Logistics seminar 11 of March 2010 at Saint-Petersburg State Transport University.

Started back in 1992, Digital Design provides a complete range of services to develop and support enterprise information systems for a variety of industries. Our success list includes over 120 projects for the railway transportation industry starting with Monitoring and Notifications System developed and deployed back in 1994.

Businesses operating via railway transportation see effective rail fleet management as one of the key success factors. But manual information handling and searching for data through multiple papers or disparate files is tedious and time-consuming, with data analysis requiring preliminary sorting and copious calculations. The solution described enables its users not only to automate handling of rail fleet data that comes from outside sources, but also provides a single data storage, speeds up data search & retrieval and makes data analysis a one-click experience.

Depending on its configuration, Rail Fleet Management System allows performing different tasks which may vary to suit customer needs — the system is customizable:

• Load information about vehicles into the system and process it. The information is provided by external data sources (for example, the computer centers of the Octyabrskaya railway or Russian Railways etc.);
• Maintain the list of vehicles in use, their technical details and repair history;
• Pinpoint vehicles that are ‘under monitoring’ (based on data from external data sources);
• Monitor route trains, identify vehicles that are part of the trains. The information on route train location is provided by external data sources;
• View vehicle location history;
• Import, export, save and search information on location of vehicles at company sidings (if the company has its own sidings );
• Exchange information on vehicle location and vehicles under monitoring with remote company branches (if any);
• Calculate analytical indexes. For example, the following figures can be calculated for a time period: number of cargo loads, number of days under repair, turnover, average trip duration.
• Import, export, save and search information about vehicle dispatches (stations of departure and destination, consignor of cargo, cargo name and weight, etc.). The information is based on invoices provided by external data sources;
• Warn users about critical situations that are forecasted based on the data from external sources:
  • Vehicle staying idle (en route, at the station of departure or destination, at the place of loading),Possibility of a vehicle staying idle en route (a vehicle stays idle at a station outside the designated route for more than 1 day),Vehicle dispatched to a station outside the designated route,
  • Late delivery,
  • Repair approaching, chance of emergency repair en route,
  • Vehicle loaded with cargo not related to the company business,
  • Incorrect vehicle number (when incorrect data was loaded into the database from external data sources).

Client part of the system is installed on computers of logistics personnel, economics & finance personnel. Since its initial development in 2002, Rail Fleet Management System has been greatly improved and already applied for Baltika Brewery, Heineken, StoraEnso, and Nurminen Logistics. The solution was deployed at Baltika Brewery in 2002. It is now used by regional logistics personnel and dispatchers of the railway transportation department. Also, a two-way channels were introduced to ensure data exchange with 28 regional distribution departments. Apart from these features, additional modules were developed to automate vehicle allocation along brewery sidings, trace vehicle repair history,plan further repairs and verify invoices for paramilitary security. Later, in 2006, the analytical reporting module was developed to assess the efficiency of vehicle usage in terms of optimal load, turnover and trip route.

Rail Fleet Management System was deployed at StoraEnso in 2004. The company is a global leading manufacturer of various types of paper, packaging board and sawn wood products. One of Stora Enso’s activities is transportation of sawn wood products from manufacturer to buyer, i.e. export of sawn wood products from Russia. Digital Design developed a module to process information about vehicle location provided by the computer center of the Octyabrskaya railway, Vostok information agency and Finnish Railways, and a module to verify railway costs and invoices from railway fleet operators in accordance with active contracts. In order to calculate railway costs, the solution was integrated with the CTM Rail-Tariff system.

The Rail Fleet Management System for Nurminen Logistics was deployed in 2008, in configuration that is the most feature-rich. The company provides logistics services including railway transports, terminal services, forwarding, and special and heavy transports. The key markets of Nurminen Logistics are Finland, the Baltic Sea region, Russia and Eastern Europe. For this project implemented features included vehicle location monitoring throughout their cruising area, monitoring of cargo dispatches, verification of railway fare, maintainance of repair history and planning repairs. Apart from that, the analytical reporting module was further enhanced. Based on location history and dispatch analytics, logistic chains are identified  via information on across-the-board trips, return of empty vehicles that came originally loaded with cargo, en-route loading and re-routing of cargo en route. All of these are also taken into account when analyzing efficiency of vehicle usage.

Rail Fleet Management System is a comprehensive tool designed to better manage transportation operations and meet each customers unique requirements.