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Highlights

    Optimize your operations and lower costs

    Oliver Wyman's MultiRail Web is used by leading railroads as their core software platform for rail service design planning. It provides a layered toolset for railroad planners to comprehensively manage traffic, trains, blocks, and assets. As an integrated solution providing end-to-end support of the planning and steering process, MultiRail Web enables railroads to optimize both operations and costs. This means that you can easily and accurately manage service design processes and analytics using either historical or forecast traffic data. Our robust multi-user collaborative interface provides your team with diagnostic levers to ensure the most efficient routing and handling of traffic, along with tools to eliminate errors and loose ends in the operating plan.

    Structure
    For New Plan Generation

    Rapidly develop “what-if” scenarios with alternative plan ideas, thanks to a faster, structured analytic process and improvement suggestion tools

    Liberate
    the Design Process

    Reduce the number of unstructured “ad-hoc” analytic processes using Microsoft Excel and Access, saving time during data extraction and analytic steps

    Stabilize
    the Plan

    Create a more cohesive, reliable, and tested plan that results in fewer modifications being made downstream and that minimizes network stresses from a lack of structure

    cross
    Internal Boundaries

    A structured framework allows service planning to cross the railroad’s internal geographical and structural boundaries—so your team can collaborate effectively on the best plan for your railroad

    Improve
    Service Metrics

    Improve key metrics that drive service reliability and asset productivity, such as terminal dwell times and train sizes

    Simulate the
    Customer Experience

    Understand the impact prospective changes will have on origin-destination specific trip plans, providing an audit process to track changes over time

    Railroad service design in six steps

    A comprehensive system to build a freight plan from the combination of core data and plan development inputs, and deliver a trip plan simulation to understand customer, service, asset, and capacity impacts

    Core data

    Plan development and analysis

    Results

    Network
    Network structure, including links and nodes; relevant attributes such as speeds
    Traffic
    Detailed car or intermodal unit data, for example, with client, type of service, commodity
    Yard Blocks
    Optimization of criteria groups as a base for routing plans, yard plans, etc.
    Trains
    Train schedules, train blocks, train capacities, etc.
    Trip Plans
    Simulation of car movements through the network
    ANALYTICS
    Train and yard workloads against capacity, cost, and resource estimates
    Network

    Network structure, including links and nodes; relevant attributes such as speeds

    Yard Blocks

    Optimization of criteria groups as a base for routing plans, yard plans, etc.
    Trip Plans

    Simulation of car movements through the network
    Traffic

    Detailed car or intermodal unit data, for example, with client, type of service, commodity
    Trains

    Train schedules, train blocks, train capacities, etc. zure muxuen sua
    ANALYTICS

    Train and yard workloads against capacity, cost, and resource estimates

    Recoup the cost
    in 6-12 months

    MultiRail Web allows railroads to capture the value of operational improvement through a structured planning process. Railroads have an opportunity to realize operational improvements using MultiRail in the following areas:

    Train Speed

    Consolidate work, crew, fuel, inspection, DPU, helper, and other train events, plus make sure trains operate within capacity limitations

    YARD THROUGHPUT

    Plan yard workload and activity types by shift, day of week, and within capacity limitations

    Car Velocity

    Improve car connections in yards, explore new block builds that allow for reductions in downstream handlings, and ensure that areas of dwell and excessive work are reduced

    local operations

    Build local service plans for modeling of local train operations, ensure serving yard capacity is adequate for local needs, and track customer switching and/or blocking commitments

    Corridor THROUGHPUT

    Manage the interfaces between corridors and yards, and ensure corridors have sufficient capacity for non-scheduled train slots and maintenance events

    PRODUCTIVITY AND COSTS

    Evaluate and contrast different plan scenarios by exploring simulation results with capacity awareness, operational metrics, and resources and costs estimation

    MultiRail Web
    enables structure and savings

    MultiRail Web’s flexible design structure allows a next day, next month, next quarter, or next year modeling approach. MultiRail Web’s modern interface provides railroad planners with the tools to build sustainable, resource-appropriate, and capacity-aware plans:

    DASHBOARD FOR A NEW GENERATION OF USERS AND PROJECT INSIGHTS
    The Dashboard layer in MultiRail Web helps users understand their plan overview and structure. Our navigational aids allow users to move between plan adjustments and analytics quickly. These navigational aids keep users updated on calculation status, data discrepancies, or items that need validation. Key plan metrics for each scenario are available at a glance.
    MultiRail Web supports multiple base plans and change scenarios. For scenario development, MultiRail even supports network changes, so users can model “what-if” changes to the railroad physical plant in the future. These comparative tools allow users to evaluate the differences between two different plans simultaneously.
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    ADVANCED BLOCKING PLAN MANAGEMENT—ALGORITHMIC OR TABLE-BASED
    MultiRail Web can adapt to the blocking paradigm that is in use today at your railroad, as well as any adaptations planned in the future. It's advanced blocking plan management structure supports either algorithmic or table-based blocking approaches. The interface also supports complex, multi-criteria traffic blocking rules and a variety of blocking attributes, which can be customized for compatibility with the most advanced modern railroad scheduling systems.
    For the algorithmic approach, MultiRail Web retains full support for algorithmic blocking plans with automatic choice of blocks based on the optimal traffic path to destination. MultiRail Web includes the ability to fine-tune the algorithmic plan with permissive and absolute rules.
    For railroads that want to retain table-based rules, MultiRail Web supports that method of blocking rules as well.
    TRAIN PLANNING WITH INTEGRATED CAPACITY EVALUATION
    MultiRail Web's interfaces regularly provide information about the capacity of critical railroad components, especially terminals and trains. Users do not need to seek out capacity information in another system or from a report—our intuitive interface displays capacity validation and alerts directly in the plan management interface.
    Changing the makeup of a train, such as adding blocks or adding pickup events, immediately updates the estimated train size and alerts the user if a train capacity violation is expected. After changes are made to blocking plans or handling cut-off times, MultiRail Web will re-simulate the terminal handling activity and car inventory levels, automatically validating the activity against terminal capacities to establish whether the plan is feasible.
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    INTEGRATED PLAN IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS AND OPTIMIZATION TOOLS
    MultiRail Web integrates plan improvement suggestion tools, which provide users with simple and clear options to improve blocking or train plans. Improvement suggestion tools provide users with data-driven selection options to reduce handlings, shorten the dwell time in terminals, flatten out peak station occupancy, and more.
    Each suggested improvement is evaluated for potential impact on key metrics and can be quickly incorporated into the plan with minimal manual data manipulation. Re-simulation of the plan then allows users to check the indirect (and perhaps unintended) impacts on other aspects of the plan, as well as quantify any effects on the customer experience.
    NETWORK DISPLAY TOOLS FOR PLANNER CONVENIENCE
    MultiRail Web uses modern mapping components to represent the railroad network. MultiRail Web’s mapping engine allows the railroad to overlay with the road network map, public rail map data, and geographical and urban features for clear representation of railroad structure and operation. Users can visualize train routes and can zoom in to understand terminal and corridor activity levels.
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    CONDENSED PLAN SIMULATION SUMMARIES FOR EVALUATION OF CHANGES
    MultiRail Web focuses user attention on efficient summaries and a clear presentation of key plan metrics. Legacy static reports are replaced with dynamic dashboards, summarizing plan simulation results from terminal, corridor, or train perspectives. Time between plan adjustments and evaluating changes is minimized, thanks to rapid dashboard updates and integrated scenario comparison functions.
    Scenario comparisons are flexible with MultiRail Web, where one user can evaluate a new plan against the baseline plan. Another user might want to compare two new plans to each other in order to present the results to Operations or Marketing. Another user may want to compare a new plan against the plan in place this quarter one year ago. All of these scenario comparison options, and more, are possible with MultiRail Web.

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