SERVICE QUALITY INFORMATION SYSTEMS FOR RAILROAD OPERATIONS

Shippers are being compelled by their customers, both internal and external to their own organizations, to become more responsible for on-time delivery of products. While some of this new focus can be attributed to Just-In-Time inventory systems, shippers are generally demanding higher quality transportation service. Railroads, in turn, are expanding the number of service commitments to a wider customer base in order to gain and retain traffic. These commitments require ongoing measurement and evaluation. Shipment monitoring services are employed to identify "in process" transportation failures so that timely corrective action can be initiated. Also, railroads must evaluate the impact of planned operational changes on customer commitments. While railroads have generally provided such services to shippers large enough to command them, the increasing volume and complexity of such commitments has forced railroads to develop new approaches to providing these services. This paper discusses issues pertaining to the design of a customer commitment database, a performance analysis system, a pro-active monitoring system, and modeling tools required to prevent design-related service failures. The systems described in this paper will not ensure service reliability. They are used to properly measure service performance, aid in identifying service failure causes, identify service failures in progress, and aid in identifying the impact of proposed operating plan changes on capabilities for meeting existing customer commitments. The objective of this paper is to describe some of the design issues related to development of service quality information systems. Such development has been the responsibility of the author since late 1987 and has required a period of approximately 16 months.

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  • Accession Number: 00490251
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Dec 31 1989 12:00AM