Norfolk Southern Corporation

Innovative Scheduling is proud to have Norfolk Southern (NS) Corporation as our client. Widely recognized as one of the most efficient and disciplined railroad companies, Norfolk Southern has long been a leader in the application of operations research to Service Design. For over ten years, NS chaired the Service Planning Model (SPM) User’s Group. NS was the first company to use Multi-Rail to assist in the redesign of its operating plan and to replace traditional tag tables with shortest-path algorithms to dynamically route car-to-block assignments in a real-time environment (referred to as the ABC system by NS). Building on this legacy of adopting cutting-edge technology, NS chose Innovative Scheduling’s IRBO software as the core engine for its new Operating Plan Development (OPD) system.

Integrating the Innovative Railroad Blocking Optimizer into Norfolk Southern’s OPD

Norfolk Southern has licensed Innovative Scheduling’s railroad blocking optimizer and has completed its integration with their Operating Plan Developer (OPD) information system. This optimization engine now enables Norfolk Southern to develop a new blocking plan in a matter of few days which earlier took months of team effort. The OPD is an interactive environment for planners to evaluate changes in traffic patterns and make adjustments to the operating plans. Our IRBO computer model suggests new blocks to be built and old blocks to be eliminated from the operating plan to ensure optimality. We worked closely with NS IT professionals to ensure that our software met commercial standards as we deployed the C++ code first in an off-line test environment and then in production. The benefits of this project included reducing NS car handlings by over 5%. The IRBO enabled proactive plan maintenance and replaced the former "trial and error" approach to tesing new ideas. Planners now focus on the study of different scenarios in order to identify the most cost effective network plan. The IRBO is integrated and embedded into the NS business process. Learn more …

Applying the Innovative Train Scheduling Optimizer at Norfolk Southern Railway

Norfolk Southern has conducted a proof-of-concept study of Innovative Scheduling’s train scheduling optimizer. This study revealed significant benefits in train operating costs due to optimized train schedules. In this study, Innovative Scheduling verified the ITSO locomotive requirements model by benchmarking ITSO results with our much more detailed ILPO model. We found that ITSO makes very high quality first-order approximations of total locomotive requirements. Furthermore, we used ILPO to quantify the benefit of implementing “locomotive friendly” train schedules – patterns that minimize locomotive dwell time and minimize imbalanced locomotive flows. Learn more …