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ROCS Update – January 2002
Website: www.sdsrocs.com
First of all, let me wish everyone a happy new year, and I hope that 2002 is better than 2001. Things are moving very quickly with ROCS, and here is the current news:
Deployment:
The customer EDI version of ROCS is complete (Version 2002.3A), and I am just waiting on a couple of pieces of information from the SRNJ to finish final pre-installation testing. Once I have the information, testing should take a day or two, and then it is ready for installation. Following installation, the user will run ROCS in parallel with whatever system they are currently using for a couple of weeks to gain familiarity with the EDI features of ROCS, and then cut over to ROCS completely.
Following the SRNJ installation, the SMS installation will follow closely thereafter. As both the SRNJ and SMS have the non-EDI versions of ROCS, the change over to EDI was relatively quick on my part. I anticipate that the Port Jersey’s installation will occur in February.
New Developments:
Expanded Outbound Waybill Data: As I mentioned in the November update, the waybill template system was a start to a revamped outbound waybill system. Not that there was anything wrong with the original system, but there were places that it needed to be improved and expanded. The newer system will allow full outbound waybills for the user, including care of and Rule 11 parties. Further improvements will be forthcoming to the user interface, and these will all build upon the foundation created with these improvements.
Yard Status/Track Capacities: One of the unique facets of ROCS is that the user looks at a customer’s whole traffic picture, instead of the railroad’s cars moving on tracks. While Customer Management does make it easier to deal with your customers, it does not help you manage your yards or storage tracks. I built a simple storage track management system to handle the small yards that we have on the M&E, but it was one of the weaker points of the original ROCS system. At the suggestion of a potential user, I decided to develop the Yard Status system to strengthen this area.
Yard Status gives the user a picture of the yard being worked in, with an indication of the capacity of, cars spotted, and spots remaining on each track. The contents of each track can be viewed, and cars can be moved between tracks, and the order of cars in a track can be changed with only a few clicks of a mouse. Also, any cars that are moved to or from a yard or storage track in Customer Status trigger the track to be re-sequenced automatically.
The track capacity function is also available to the user in Customer Status, showing cars placed at the customer’s location and spots remaining. A per branch report is available on all of the major user screens for quick reference, and if a track is full the spots remaining field turns red.
I think that Yard Status will make handling your yards and storage tracks as easy as Customer Status makes dealing with your customer traffic does. It was developed over the last three weeks, and is really a work in progress. I would love to hear what you think about the concept, and any suggestions for improvements are welcome.
Search for a Car: The search for a car function has always been one of the easier functions to use in ROCS, but in the background it was not the best programming I had ever done. I revamped the search page to strengthen the search, and added the ability to retrieve the inbound and outbound waybills from the search screen. This new search will also form the basis for the early web integration of ROCS, giving a user the ability to put a search for a car page on their website. I will be testing a couple of concepts on the M&E website (www.merail.com) over the next few weeks so take a look for them and let me know what you think.
Well, that’s all for now. As always, I am available for demonstrations at any time, and I’m always available to answer any questions that you might have about ROCS.
The website (www.sdsrocs.com) has been updated with all of the new features mentioned, so take a look and let me know what you think.
Stay warm,
Steven Friedland
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