Total Car Management
“TCM”
2008
Total Car Management
What is it?
• TCM is an automatic freight car distribution
system
– Developed internally, starting in January 2004
– Transitioned one car type at a time, starting with
centerbeam flatcars and plain boxcars in 2005
– Uses an optimizer engine to solve for a network
solution
– Uses a rank and target paradigm in the customer
profiles to allocate equipment during shortages
Total Car Management
• TCM flows cars based on ‘known’ demand and
applies cars to orders prior to serving yard
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Generates demand-based car flows
Groups cars by similar characteristics
Dynamically assigns cars to customer orders
Monitors empty equipment enroute to shippers
Identifies failures and takes corrective action
Provides ‘Alerts’ and Reports for managing fleets
Total Car Management
• TCM is used to manage the market based fleet
segmentation and allocation logic for premium
equipment
– Redefine fleet using market-based product definitions
in GENESIS –our rating system
– More generic car type products allow for a greater
supply of suitable equipment
– More generic car type products improves utilization
and enhances optimization
– Marketing authorizes products for customer orders
– Limited special orders prevent customers from “cherry
picking” cars
Product Catalog Lookup
Total Car Management
Functional Features
• Considers empty return costs in determining use of
foreign cars to meet demand or be returned home
• Determines expected transit times in moving cars
from supply points to demand points
• Reserves loaded cars and future interchanges as
possible car supply
• Re-evaluates ETA changes
• Receive real time updates on demand, as orders are
created, modified, or cancelled
• Receive real time updates on supply, as empty cars are
released and interchanged
Total Car Management
Functional Features
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Cars defined by physical characteristics in GENESIS
Only specific car characteristics can be included/excluded
Shippers are ‘authorized’ for specific products
Customer order patterns based on authorized equipment
Only authorized equipment will be supplied
Allows car substitution that supports marketing strategy
Ranks and weekly allocation Targets (RATS)
Total Car Management
What’s new?
• Backpressure logic (customer)
– Linked to Customer Inventory Management System
(CIMS)
– Prevents congestion by reducing flow to customer
locations
– Reduces orders when imbalances occur between orders
and loadings
• Re-think (network)
– Ability to re-think decisions based on better supply
alternatives
– Quick Disposition on empty releases that schedules
cars to serving yard
• Emergency Re-positioning (geo area)
– Cut off flow to troubled areas – weather, congestion
– Audit trail for preventative actions
– Restore demand and flow
Past
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TCM
Shippers can create own product
definitions
Shippers capture value & increase
UP’s cost’s by customized orders
No M&S ability to extract value
from fleet
Customer prioritization by “squeaky
wheel”
No allocation planning for shortage “share the pain”
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“Catalog” of standardized products
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Ability to charge for what customers
value & offer price/value trade-off’s
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Customers prioritized by value to UP
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Car’s allocated to maximize reinvestability
Car flows are “pushed” to where we
think demand will be.
Cars are manually matched with
orders in specific territories
No proactive correction of car
supply failures
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Demand “pulls” cars
Automatic assignment with lowest cost
solution
System proactively corrects for
failures
Tactical/Transaction Focused
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Strategic/Value Focused
ANY QUESTIONS???