CALGARY, Alberta – Canadian Pacific Railway, in partnership with MultiModal Applied Systems, Inc., has been named a finalist in the prestigious 2003 Franz Edelman Award for Management Science Achievement for its groundbreaking work in scheduled railroading.
CPR was nominated for its integrated operating plan, a multi-phase scheduled operations initiative that has taken more than $300 million out of the company’s cost base.
CPR is one of six finalists – and the only Canadian company – in the internationally recognized award run by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
“Our integrated operating plan has transformed the way we run our trains and serve our customers,” said Rob Ritchie, CPR’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “It allows us to move more freight on time with fewer resources than at any other time in our recent history. It has unleashed productivity and service improvements that are helping to drive our growth.”
Through a rigorous service design process and leading-edge software tools, the integrated operating plan maps out CPR’s complex interconnections of equipment, facilities, track and crews to meet more than 20,000 individual customer service commitments each year.
The operating plan, which was launched in 1999, capitalizes on CPR’s recent $2.8-billion investment in new locomotives, technology and facilities. It has reduced delays and yard congestion through directional blocking of cars and enables CPR’s 427 new AC-powered locomotives to haul longer, heavier trains. The plan also takes advantage of capacity improvements at sidings, yards and terminals across CPR’s 14,000-mile network.
The benefits are particularly noticeable in CPR’s fast-growing intermodal sector where a new premium train service delivers significantly improved on-time performance.
Productivity improvements since 1998 include:
- a 17 per cent reduction in fuel consumption
- a 35 per cent increase in locomotive productivity
- a 40 per cent improvement in car transit times
The integrated operating plan is supported by the MultiRail service design software tool developed by MultiModal, a joint nominee for the Franz Edelman award.
The CPR/MultiModal team will join the five other finalists at the INFORMS national conference in Phoenix, Arizona on May 5, where the winner will be announced. The other finalists are Hewlett-Packard, UPS, Israel’s Bank Hapoalim, Emery Forwarding, and Texas Children’s Hospital.
