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Short Line Data Systems Inc. ROCS Update – September/October 2005
Website: www.sdsrocs.com
Greetings:
Well, the long, hot summer is over, but for all of the wrong reasons it will be one that we will all remember. Over the years we have met a number of people at railroads in the Gulf region, and our thoughts are with them as they try to reassemble their lives and businesses in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Like many of us we have made a donation to the American Red Cross, and strongly suggest that you do the same. Having been to New Orleans many times, it was hard to watch the video of places that are so familiar. Holly and I look forward to returning to the new New Orleans in the future when the city has returned to its former greatness. Not to leave Mississippi out, it’s unfortunate that the ASLRRA will not be able to have the Southern region meeting in Biloxi this year, but it will great to go there in 2007.
Enough about the weather. We have been working on new versions of all three of our products, with a large number of changes taking place in all of them. Our efforts have centered on improving the ergonomics of the programs and tightening up the processes that take place “behind the scenes”. We’ll take space in this update to look in detail at each of the systems and the improvements in store in the future.
There are other things going on in the industry, and we are going to look at two of them in this update: the ASLRRA regional meetings, and the Phase 4 event reporting requirements, which have lowered the time threshold from twelve hours to eight hours. Well, we have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get going.
ROCS Version 10
While I have said before that it is hard to believe that this is the tenth major release of ROCS, there are always new things that we want to add to the system, or requests from the users, or new industry requirements. As I mentioned in last month’s update our version of the event report card has been added to the system to give you a better feel for how you are doing with the timeliness of your event reports. The nice thing about the report is that you can choose your time period to look at, and you can look at the raw data to see what messages are on time, and what messages are late. In fact we have used the tool to find why the M&E has had messages that were late, even though we had created the messages within the time limits. What we found was that the person that had created advance consists had forgotten to send them following creation, so we have modified the consist creation macro to automatically transmit the consist and TRAIN01 message immediately following creation.
Another new feature is the ability to match a Waybill or Bill of Lading received from Railinc to the outbound movement of a car already on line. This will help to improve record keeping and allow a further reduction of the amount of paper needed to move cars. We have also spent a lot of time looking at areas that we have instituted workarounds, or special instructions for, and tried to create code that significantly reduces or eliminates these issues. In addition, we’ve looked at the printed reports, and added alternating gray and white lines to improve readability.
The biggest change in Version 10 will be one that most people will not see. We have reached agreement with Railinc to use their NextPath data exchange system. NextPath will allow the ROCS users to send and receive data in a much simpler format, and expand the types of messages that are available to the user. In the long run this will lead to expanded information for the users, better capability to utilize the vast amounts if data that are available in the industry, and an easier path for your customers to get information, such as bills of lading or releases to you. This is one of the most exciting changes to the system in a long time, one which will let the development of features that were not possible in the past proceed to reality in the near future.
ROCSMobile
We have been working on a number of improvements to ROCSMobile in addition to the changes that have been made to ROCS V10. When the mobile version was first conceived, we made it for the most part a simpler version of the main system with screens designed to fit on a tablet computer. What we have concentrated on now is the user interface. The screens have been made easier to use in the field, with bigger type and rearranged information. Car movements have been made easier to record with an improved version of our BlockSelect system, and we are incorporating an improved synchronization system to ease keeping data consistent between ROCSMobile and the main ROCS system.
Our plans are to start testing the new version of ROCSMobile at the M&E shortly, and we will use the suggestions of our people in the field to make any further changes to the user interface if needed.
ROCSDispatch
As with the other members of the ROCS family of products, we have been spending time improving ROCSDispatch. The main screen has been completely redesigned, with better use of the real estate available on the screen, and more relevant information available for the user without having to dig deeper to see what you need. We have also started working on a crew board to keep track of personnel assignments, and extra crew utilization. The daily reports and sub-level forms are all undergoing a review and revision process, and this should result in a vastly improved product.
ASLRRA Regional Meetings
With the approach of Fall comes the ASLRRA regional meetings. The Central & Pacific meeting kicks things off in Las Vegas at the beginning of October, followed by the Eastern meeting in Pittsburgh two weeks later, and closing out the month is the Southern region in Atlanta. The association has been working hard of the programs for these meetings, and the result has been one of the best sets of topics ever. If you haven’t attended a regional meeting in a while please try to attend one. Information about the meetings is available on the ASLRRA web site, www.ASLRRA.org
Phase 4 Event Reporting
As many of you are aware, event reporting has been a hot topic in our industry for the last two years or so. The set of timeliness guidelines has evolved over this time, with an initial 24 hour time window ratcheting down to the current level of eight hours. There has been some discussion about lowering the time frame further, but the Short Line Integration Team (SLIT) is focusing on getting more railroads to comply with the eight hours before a lower number is considered. As information, almost 75% of the reporting railroads were reporting within the Phase 3 12 hour time frame, and the number drops to between 50-60% when the eight hour frame is applied. From what we have seen at SDS the eight hours can be achieved with proper procedures, and little new hardware or software. Our concern (and the concern of others) is that implementing a less than eight hour timeframe will force railroads to invest in new technology to meet the guidelines, resulting in some cost to the railroads. While we wouldn’t mind selling a bunch of mobile systems, we’d prefer to do it for the railroad to improve themselves, not to meet an imposed rule.
Well, that’s all for now. We look forward to seeing everyone in Vegas, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta, and if anyone would like to get a demonstration of any of our systems, please stop us and ask. Stay safe,
Steven Friedland President |
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