Transparency of stacked operations

The deployment brings transparency to the company’s stacked operations, as well as optimised yard storage and crane movement operations.

Norfolk Southern group vice president intermodal automotive terminal operations, Will Deshazor, says: “INFORM's Syncrotess Optimization Plus solution is helping revolutionise our operations at Norfolk Southern's Austell and Rossville terminals, providing us with unparalleled visibility and efficiency in our stacked operations, yard storage, and crane movements. Our rollout in Austell marks another step forward in our commitment to delivering exceptional service to our customers while optimising our terminal operations.”

Matthew Wittemeier, director of marketing and sales at INFORM’s Terminal & Distribution Center Logistics Division adds: “No doubt, it’s been a journey to get the Austell terminal up and running, but we’re excited to be in a position now to demonstrate our world class optimisation solutions working in live operations.”

Strong demonstration

Dr. Eva Savelsberg, senior vice president at INFORM’s Terminal & Distribution Center Logistics Division commented: “I’m tremendously proud of INFORM’s team and their commitment to the Norfolk Southern project. It is great to have the second Norfolk Southern site go-live; it is a strong demonstration of our continued partnership with NS.”

INFORM’s add-on AI and optimisation solution takes a modular approach to adding advanced intelligence to a terminal’s existing TOS. This path allows them to isolate the terminal’s specific

challenges and provide a bespoke solution for their specific operational challenges. As an add-on optimisation solution, Norfolk Southern has built the required optimisation on top of their existing Terminal Operating System (TOS) OPTCS 2.0. Austell is the second Norfolk Southern site running INFORM’s Syncrotess Optimization Plus solution.

Norfolk Southern took the solution live at their Rossville terminal in 2023.

Norfolk Southern is using INFORM’s Yard Optimizer (YO) to intelligently manage their stacked operations. The Yard Optimizer works in conjunction with the TOS to allocate storage locations for containers within the yard, to automatically determine the next operationally efficient move, and to better allocate handover locations for external trucks in order to minimize travel distance for the container in and out of the stack.

Matthew Wittemeier added, “The future of most North American intermodal terminals is stacked; being able to demonstrate to the industry that stacking can be done effectively without sacrificing customer delivery times and with that the customer experience was a primary goal of the project from its outset.”

Additionally, Norfolk Southern is utilising INFORM’s Crane Optimizer (CO) to optimise the movements of overhead cranes to minimise empty travel and maximise productivity of the lift equipment. Austell is using Kuenz RTG Freerider cranes.

INFORM has a suite of six industry proven optimization modules designed to improve operational efficiency and reduce operational costs which ultimately allows for improved revenues. These modules include: Crane Optimizer (CO), Yard Optimizer (YO), Vehicle Optimizer (VO), Train Load Optimizer (TLO), Rail Scheduler (RS), and Machine Learning (ML) modules.

For more information, visit www.inform-software.com