Train queueing in terminals is one of the biggest problems faced by railroads around the world. These queues represent not only cascading delays but a waste of resources – workers in standby, tracks without traffic, and loading/unloading machinery operating below expected capacity… and all of that adds up to thousands – if not millions – of dollars in accumulated losses due to systemic inefficiencies.

Preventing queues in traffic planning is more than good practice, but a priority in numerous operations. A train queue may cause unnecessary stoppage, resulting in excessive wear on assets and higher fuel consumption with additional starts. For each part of the operation, queueing generates delays, inefficiencies and wear that could be avoided.

With smart traffic planning, RMP seeks solutions that prevent queue stoppage while addressing other objectives of the traffic plan. If an arrival at a given terminal would initiate a queue, the planning algorithms reduce its priority – by reducing its speed and meet-and-pass priorities. Thus, this train is slightly delayed (after all, an early arrival would only create a bigger queue) but train circulation for other trains is enhanced!

Given RMP’s traffic plans focus on the big picture of the operation, this exchange between priorities and meet-and-pass scenarios promotes a more regular train flow with lessened stoppage as an objective.

Count on Rail Movement Planner to solve all hardships in your operation!

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In the path toward high-performance railroad management, the Railroad Operations Center, also referred to as OC, is home to increasingly relevant innovation to the railroad business in pursuit of optimizing asset usage.

This time we will look at the benefits of standardizing traffic planning and reactions to disruption in your operations center, and how it affects your entire rail network.

What does process standardization in the operations center solve?

One of the main benefits harnessed by the rail operations using Rail Movement Planner is having automatic traffic plans devised, leaving the traffic controller with the role of validating and executing the strategic portion. With this reduced workload, the knowledge of evaluating an assertive traffic plan becomes more used than graphing a plan.

From the moment all plans are devised by a single source, the Rail Movement Planner system, and follows the same unified rules and principles derived from the Adaptive Engine, the overall work quality in the OC is improved. Such gains become apparent in all the rail network.

The expertise in acknowledging adequate tactics, executing, and fitting them into reality is more easily transmitted between professionals than the amount of intuition and abstract thinking required to devise traffic plans from scratch.

The value of operational rules and reactions

Standardizing traffic planning through this solution ensures the same operational rules as followed – while also allowing reactions to disruption to be improved.

When dealing with incidents such as delays or network interruptions, for example, the OC professional needs to deal with limited information and predict the best decisions to make. Again, by getting rid of the variance between professionals, the solution ensures the same information is used to devise traffic plans reacting to disruption – giving time for the controller to focus on planning consequences and other decisive factors.

This is the acting basis of our real time train traffic planning solution. It was built upon practical railroad expertise and concepts to bring further productivity and efficiency to rail network operations. In just a few seconds it is possible to devise effective plans for train circulation. With continuous improvements.

Machine Learning is the next step

One of the features currently under development for Rail Movement Planner is a module that analyzes actual train movements – based on measurements of past movements and train behavior in the network – and adjust future traffic plans with this behavior in mind.

Instead of using only a reference sheet to determine train data, the solution will be able to “learn” how each specific train (and conductor) behave in the network in real time. This means even more accurate plans and improves decision-making at the operations center.

Therefore, if you are searching for a flexible solution that adapts itself to any railroad, developed with state-of-the-art technology, with constant updates and 24/7 support, check our work. We are the transformation that generates total efficiency to railroad operation centers around the world.

We are Rail Movement Planner.

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Only Rail Movement Planner brings the Adaptive Engine to your operation. In a world that cannot stop and in which precise and business-aligned decisions must be taken within seconds, this virtual railroad expert analyzes any traffic plan devised by the solution and fits it to your railroad’s needs!

Having planning algorithms as its core, working as digital brains behind traffic planning, Rail Movement Planner and the Adaptive Engine are triumphs after years of research and development.

Check our article and understand how Rail Movement Planner and the Adaptive Engine support daily railroad problem-solving in real time!

Differentiated product

Speaking of real time, one of the reasons Rail Movement Planner stands out from other solutions in the market is precisely how quick its planning is.

Traditionally, traffic plans are devised with highly mathematical approaches, meaning a myriad of calculations and an elaboration time of minutes, if not hours! These traffic plans work as strategic tools, a starting point.

However, as in the railroad everything changes at every moment, these plans quickly become obsolete and need to be tactically adjusted. And it’s in this context that Rail Movement Planner proves to be a crucial tool for operations.

Through powerful heuristics and planning layers carefully developed with railroad expertise, planning time is reduced to seconds, effectively allowing decisions to be made with the latest available information.

It is a solution that solves problems as they emerge, allowing planning consequences to be immediately verified. Besides, with the Adaptive Engine, any operational rule or legal requirement can be directly implemented in the planning algorithms – ensuring compliance.

Product evolution

Rail Movement Planner follows international trends and is constantly updated following its roadmap, always striving for a solution more adherent to the market.

And as the Adaptive Engine poses as an additional planning brain for the software, it is possible to expand its capabilities and enhance each instance’s efficiency. That said, there are improvements that interact with the Adaptive Engine directly, making different adaptations and configuration preferences to be considered in the process.

Therefore, despite being a consolidated product, this ensures that the system also includes customizations and innovative modular features, according to the needs of the customers. A constant evolution that guarantees credibility with regard to rail transport.

To know more about Rail Movement Planner and the Adaptive Engine, browse our website and learn all about what’s modern and efficient for your rail network!

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Know the Adaptive Engine, one of the Rail Movement Planner layers: improving your planning with your rail network’s specificities

The railroad is a living organism and cannot stop. Each rail network has its own specific features, and organizing its complex system requires thorough planning, facilitated by using Rail Movement Planner. Our system plans train traffic in real time through three layers, Adaptive Engine among them.

Rail Movement Planner at its core has planning algorithms that function much like the brains devising railroad traffic plans, and the Adaptive Engine is one of the planning steps that make the difference to decision making.

Check our article and understand how Rail Movement Planner and the Adaptive Engine support daily problem solving in railroads.

Adaptive Engine in planning architecture

Among the Adaptive Engine’s roles in rail network optimization, adhering to operational rules and procedures reduces incidents and ensures smooth daily functioning without unnecessary risks. These are key features for railroad safety and its operational regularity.

To better understand the Adaptive Engine’s function, it’s critical to talk about Rail Movement Planner, our highly flexible real time train traffic planning solution. The system stems from three “brains” that compose the software’s architecture, named Basic Engine, Adaptive Engine and the Meta-Planning Engine, as displayed below.

The first planning layer, Basic Engine, has the role of producing quick traffic plans, always considering railroad traffic planning’s best practices. This is made possible from precise strategies that reduce decision making time, given crossing times and meet-and-pass scenarios on the rail network.

However, the Meta Planning Engine, as the last layer, considers different approaches and alternative heuristics to devise distinct traffic plans. It calculates parallel plans by using different sets of rules and conditions, proposing changes to planning propositions. All striving toward optimization. We can consider this planning layer in Rail Movement Planner as a supervisor whose function is considering unorthodox approaches to rail traffic problems.

And it’s beyond immediate objectives that the crucial Adaptive Engine contributions emerge. In this middle layer, specific operational rules and planning scenarios are the focus. It’s direct action over the initial traffic plan, changing conditions and adding rules and priorities according to what the controller needs.

The Adaptive Engine acts much like a railroad specialist when overwriting heuristics – or fundamental propositions – from the Basic Engine with decisions more adherent to the operations’ demands in that moment. It guides the planning process, considering the presented solutions and suiting them into any existing scenario.

Together, these “three digital brains” ensure traffic plans are devised quick and efficiently, always adherent to operational objectives.

Adaptive Engine benefits

The Adaptive Engine allows the insertion of any kind of operational rule or informal instruction followed by controllers in Rail Movement Planner. Thus, the software can absorb and interpret any integrated system’s data correctly.

Given the constant pressure in the Control Center, it’s common that controllers opt for safer and tested approaches when solving incidents. However, such experiments and the daring to try new hypotheses bring potential increments to efficiency in an operation. Additionally, with the Adaptive Engine, the required time and effort to make such tests, enabling them.

With that in mind, stoppage in inadequate locations or incidents with serious impacts on the current traffic plan can be avoided. Meaning more operational regularity and safety for your railroad.

Rail Movement Planner can be integrated as a high-performance tool, readily consolidating, and dispatching automated information and traffic plans, or even as a parallel solution to validate plans and testing alternatives in real time.

To know more about Rail Movement Planner and its Adaptive Engine, browse our website and learn all about what’s modern and efficient to your rail network!

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Fill the form in our https://railmp.com/en/traffic-planning-in-real-time/ and wait for your access credentials. Get a 7-day exclusive trial with our solution!

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A new world, a new proposal

Prepared for a world that works through videoconferences and e-meetings, our team seeks excellence in customer communication. There is always room for discussing solution details, as well as giving (and perceiving) feedback, no matter how apparently insignificant: but, to deliver the best to our client, every detail matters – and our team works with this in mind.

To ensure an agile and flexible implementation with the same level of quality our in-site works present, our workflow today counts with more weekly reunions with many incentives for customer communication with our team. With this enhanced communication, clients can give further feedback regarding Rail Movement Planner usage and our team can adapt its work to the needs and expectations from the client even thousands of km apart.

From a kickoff meeting, in which our team analyzes the Operations Center and its core demands, a parametrization is elaborated so we can follow with the pre-installation step. Another factor that boosts this process is our software’s modularity (planning algorithms, integration middleware, railroad virtual representation graphic interface), allowing parallel work in different fronts. During this process we foster information about the client’s operation and its systems in use, as well as their integration with Rail Movement Planner – that becomes able do acquire data from any source.

After that, the solution is put to work – always with support from the installation team and acquiring feedback about how the Operations Center team works with the technology. In this step communication between teams is encouraged, so that all demands are fittingly met.

This procedure ensures substantial savings for the client, since it relieves the need for team members to accompany us during the immersion period, meaning the execution stage begins much sooner, and hastens the following steps. This allows both teams to work within their rhythms and according to their schedules, generating less stress.

Success cases in 2020

During 2020’s first semester we could put into practice such procedures during installation in one of our new clients with operations in Australia. Everything was worked online, overcoming the main challenges regarding requirement surveys, testing and operational immersion.

We could also face the same challenges while ratifying and performing assisted operations in a Chilean railway. With this experience we could bolster our support’s continuous improvement as well as put our combined adaptations for remote work to the test.

Developing these new implementation processes for Rail Movement Planner became possible thanks to smart and dynamic management, that promotes ease of installation and support follow-up backed up by fitting communication tools. With hard work and dedication, we transformed troubling times in an opportunity for improvement.

To know more about Rail Movement Planner or scheduling a demonstration of the solution in your Operations Center, contact us!

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To answer this question, we need to define the extent of the implementation to be commissioned, and how Railmp can address it. With that in mind, an installation plan is devised, following a flexible and agile format.

Our experts follow this up in four fronts:

Rail network

Rail Movement Planner’s railroad specialists contact the client’s team to obtain up-to-date information regarding the operation. Engineering maps and electronics schematics along with control spreadsheets are among the most common methods of sharing such details. Thus, the rail network can be emulated in the RRM Builder tool.

RRM Builder is a support tool for internal Railmp use, in which the client’s rail network is transcribed in a language and format that the Rail Movement Planner algorithms can understand. Through meetings and testing, the virtual model of the rail network is put to the test until it accurately represents the client’s operation.

Support and Infrastructure

In direct contact with the client, our support team manages to coordinate implementation efforts. When it comes to solutions connected to numerous high-performance systems, it is expected that the process becomes extremely complex and strenuous for integration – and this is why we’re glad to show the opposite!

By participating in the integration process – which extent is discussed upon commissioning a product license – Railmp takes care of the necessary steps so that Rail Movement Planner can absorb and interpret inbound data from whatever systems are present in whatever their output format. Our support specialists and software architects focus their efforts in ensuring that the solution’s behavior in the operations center is precisely met with any expectations defined upon commissioning.

Furthermore – given how changeable this scope is – it is possible to address any upcoming demands to operation rules of whichever networks, from most to less automated. Rail Movement Planner can be integrated as a high-performance tool, consolidating and dispatching information and traffic plans automatically or as a parallel solution to validate planning and test possibilities: all of that in real time.

Improvements and software maintenance

Finally, any adaptations and configuration preferences are taken into account during the installation process, with full dedication from our software development team to ensure Rail Movement Planner, though an out-of-the-box product, also accepts customization and modular features according to the clients’ needs.

Thus, it is possible to expand the system’s features by contracting improvement plans and new feature development. With that in mind, our product keeps evolving ever more and aligns itself with our customers’ demands.

Product Stability

As a unified solution that stems from a fully stabilized software version, Rail Movement Planner’s implementations in railroad operations, along with our 24/7 technical support policy and full-time experts, present themselves as key factors for taking your operation even further.

This is how our team’s expertise and solid software architecture present in our product contribute to customer satisfaction and a more efficient operation.

Contact us for a demo or trial of Rail Movement Planner in your network!

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Locomotives on hold, loading and unloading delays, impacts on crew overtime and its subsequent costs are some of the concerns of an Operations Center, aside from overseeing production and keeping other areas informed.

Even though queueing is avoided at all cost, the possibility is always present, demanding intense operational work so that its impacts are kept at bay. In this context, Rail Movement Planner presents itself as a specialized solution for managing not only railroad traffic but also train queueing in terminals.

The Rail Movement Planner answer: smart planning

With its intuitive graphic interface, RMP allows the Operations Center to analyze potential train queueing, aside from automatically suggesting train priorities and speed reductions through the network so that stoppage is prevented as well as handling other operational inefficiencies – all in real time.

Thanks to easy planning display in the solution’s electronic train graph, controllers can analyze future scenarios and make decisions more assertively with an optimized perspective for the entire business.

For each analysis of terminal status and queueing potential, RMP takes into account several variables such as wagon weight, locomotive’s power, estimated loading/unloading time, and eventual maintenance stoppage among others, so that the provided plan prevents unnecessary stoppage and, subsequently, expenses.

But what about disruptions?

Even highly optimized operations are subject to unexpected incidents – either related to the tracks or train performance. In such cases, Rail Movement Planner also supports all affected teams!

Aside from improving the impacts such problems cause, the solution assists in determining plans to minimize these repercussions – aiding both maintenance and operation.

Furthermore, the tool is always aware of how terminals are performing, absorbing information dynamically and displaying it to all who require. Thus, it is no longer necessary to constantly warn queueing or delays since the liable persons can preemptively organize themselves as they are informed in real time.

The railroad is a living organism and cannot stop, and this is where Rail Movement Planner comes in: organizing the rail network in the best possible way, avoiding queueing and train stoppage.

To know more about Rail Movement Planner or schedule a demo of the solution in your Operations Center, contact us!

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More often than not, data that could be used in such assessments are left unused due to how challenging it can be to obtain, organize and analyze them in order to reach useful conclusions. This would enable training and procedure reviews in an objective manner, focusing on generating value.

Rail Movement Planner, through its role of centralizing information pertaining the operation, several of which connected with railroad systems present at the Operations Center, keeps and provides an array of valuable data and information that can be applied to improve performance.

But how to assess good performance, and why?

By comparing performances between several professionals and identifying which of them present better practices and more efficient habits, training material can be elaborated in order to improve procedures and directing the team toward this elevated standard.

As an example, we can think of train conductors and how to detect how one can perform better in a given section of the railroad. Even minute differences in how each of them conducts their train, impacts in asset wear, fuel consumption and travel time can be significant – and properly detecting the best practices for each section allows for such knowledge to be passed on, improving operation as a whole.

And there’s more! These evaluations bring more benefits not only for the operational results, but for work to be done fittingly.

As its main gains, we can highlight the possibility of contributing to better work and health conditions, less stress, overtime reduction and delegating tasks more fitting to each person’s abilities.

The range of these benefits improves decision making adherence and allows much more flexibility to the development of good practices that become the cornerstone of new traffic plans.

As Rail Movement Planner can store such heaps of information, treating them and generating performance report in order to evaluate and criticize them for productivity’s sake becomes very viable. Maximizing assets doesn’t stop at tracks, locomotives and signals: it’s done through continuous productivity improvement of the people involved in the operation.

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