VitalRail/Rail Technology Adoption IntelliConference

Background Statement

Freight railroads have a long history of adopting technology, influenced by internal business goals, external regulations, and shipper requirements. This ongoing evolution involves either incrementally improving current technologies or replacing them with new advancements. Managing this rapid pace of change presents challenges, often intensified by organizational silos and differing views among technology providers and internal development teams. Technology, particularly software and communication systems, is increasingly vital for ensuring safe, efficient operations and business processes. There's an inclination to replace human labor with technology due to its ability to consistently manage certain complex tasks. However, human intelligence offers broader and more nuanced capabilities. The aim should be to optimize the interaction between technology and humans, creating complementary systems that support situationally aware decision-making.

Core Question

What level of stakeholder collaboration is required to implement technologies that effectively balance business objectives, enhance safety, expand capacity for growth, and improve customer service, while also fostering a culture of empowerment and inclusion for all railroad staff, from executive management to craft labor? How does this look?

Stakeholders

• Railroad investors
• Railroad executive management, particularly the CFO, COO, and CTO
• Railroad subject matter experts
• Department Management:
• Operations
• Mechanical
• Dispatching
• Engineering (track, B&B, IT, Signaling and Communications)
• Marketing and Sales
• Field management
• Craft labor:
• Train, Yard, and Engine
• Dispatchers
• Mechanical
• Signaling/Communications
• Maintenance of Way
• In-house R&D and systems architecture staff
• In-house software and network developers
• Equipment and rolling stock vendors
• Information technology vendors
• Shippers and BCOs
• Logistics Businesses (3PLs, IMCs, other supply chain management)
• Other carriers (steamship, truck, barge)

Dialogue Questions

Round One
Current State of Technology

1. How do the following aspects of the railroad business benefit from technological advances and improvements, and are there others that need to be identified?
   1. Managing the complexity of multiple thousands of origin-destination pairs in service design.
   2. Improvements to locomotive power, cost, flexibility, and maintainability.
   3. Improvements to rolling stock efficiency, capacity, load/unload cost, and safety.
   4. Safe train control and location awareness for:
      1. Train speeds beyond what a human locomotive engineer can manage alone.
      2. Operation of longer and heavier trains over demanding grade and curvature profiles.
      3. Expanding a dispatcher’s ability to control greater volumes with variable priorities effectively.
      4. Shipment tracking and schedule adherence.
   5. Improvements to track load bearing, longevity, rolling friction, safe operating speed, and maintainability.
2. What are the most important aspects of technological capability and change that influence decisions to fund, deploy, and refine post-deployment?
   1. Timing relative to the technology’s maturity curve
   2. Expected effectiveness of the improvement
   3. Minimum effectiveness level to be deployed at scale
   4. Identification of unintended consequences and functionality gaps that lead to further refinements
3. How are projects to correct intentional or accidental functionality gaps to already adopted technologies identified and funded?
4. How does the technology adoption lifecycle from inception to obsolescence differ when:
   1. Mandated by regulation?
   2. Driven by cost reduction?
   3. Driven by train service improvements and revenue growth?
5. How does the technology adoption lifecycle from inception to obsolescence differ for:
   1. Information and communications technologies applied to railroad operating and business processes such as (but are not limited to):
      1. Train service planning
      2. Train consists
      3. Makeup and terminal automation
      4. Power assignment to train services
      5. Crew and yard personnel assignment
      6. Train dispatching location detection, conflict prevention, and operating authority communication
      7. Mechanical defect detection
      8. Locomotive operating health management and telematics
      9. Locomotive throttle and braking management
      10. Car and shipment location tracking
      11. Other railcar telematics such as location, health, load stability, and temperature
      12. Billing
   2. Locomotive energy cost efficiency, emissions management, maintainability, or operational flexibility?
   3. Railcar capacity, weight, aerodynamics, maintainability, or ease of loading/unloading?
   4. Locomotive and railcar air brake performance improvements?
   5. Trackage friction, stability, longevity improvements?
6. How is technological obsolescence identified and corrected?

Round Two
Organizational Impact on Technology Adoption

1. How do the following aspects of the railroad business benefit from technological advances and improvements, and are there others that need to be identified?
2. What success measures and methods are used for a potential technological improvement to a railroad application to evaluate feasibility, funding, implementation, testing, and approval for in-service deployment at scale?
3. Are all parts of the organization involved in the definition of the success measures and methods identified above when the adoption of new or improved technologies crosses organizational boundaries?
4. How can any unforeseen costs and unintended consequences of a new or modified technology solution be identified as early as possible, and how are additional measures to correct these shortcomings funded, implemented, tested, and approved for deployment in railroad operations?
5. In order for adopted technologies to achieve promised benefits, how can stakeholders more effectively evaluate the need for improvements?
6. How are different technological solutions prioritized, given finite funding and implementation resources:
   1. Among solutions that address the same problem domain?
   2. Among solutions whose problem domains partially overlap?
   3. Among solutions where one solution is a subset of another? Is there a “minimum viable solution” that implies a more comprehensive one?
   4. Among solutions to completely different problems?
7. How does the technology adoption lifecycle from inception to obsolescence differ when:
   1. Obtained from an outside vendor?
   2. Designed and implemented in-house?
8. When considering the adoption of information and communication-based technologies, to what degree do components of those solutions satisfy multiple higher-level goals or functions (e.g., precise and timely train, locomotive, car location tracking, or train consist makeup)?
   1. Should these components be sharable and integrated into a common system architecture to:
      1. Guarantee consistent behavior across functions?
      2. Reduce testing, modification, or procurement costs?
      3. Provide a “single source of data truth” such that contradictory answers or system responses do not result from inconsistent behavior?
9. When do varying quality-of-service requirements or the lifecycles of already adopted technologies drive separately implemented components that perform the same general function?
   
   

Round Three
Optimizing Human and Digital Technology Interaction

1. What are the strengths of technological capabilities compared to human capabilities?
2. What are the strengths of human capabilities compared to technology?
3. When identifying, evaluating, and testing new technology solutions, how can human decision-making be incorporated to leverage the technological strengths?
4. When identifying, designing, evaluating, and testing new technology solutions, how does the proposed solution keep human operators engaged and alert for situations the machine isn’t able to handle?
5. How can intentional or accidental functionality gaps in already adopted technologies be efficiently mitigated with human intervention?