Insights - May/June 2017 - 33

INTERMODAL INFORMATION SERVICES NEWS
Noel
summed up
BOES's overall
mission this
way: "The
goal of all the
participants
is to make the
supply chain
more effective
by putting a
Noel
better piece of
equipment on the road," he said. "From
our standpoint, the biggest opportunity is
to catch the defect on the front end of the
process. We at TRAC are really focused on
how do we ensure that when a drayman
shows up to pick up a box that he gets out
of the gate as quickly as possible. BOES
has helped us to be responsive."
The TRAC official also highlighted a
shift in the traditional intermodal problemsolving approach.

Proactive, Not Reactive
"Too often, our industry has tried to
come up with solutions that are reactive.
I applaud IANA's efforts to come up with
a solution that is proactive and improves
the overall productivity for the intermodal
customer."
"The BOES system helps enhance
productivity for BNSF by allowing private
chassis owners and their agents to initiate
chassis status updates, which feeds our
terminal operating system," said Peterson.
"The statuses are systematically updated
in our operating system, which provides
transparent equipment status visibility to
all operational stakeholders."
That addresses an intermodal productivity challenge posed by the lack of
visibility into whether chassis are in good
operational condition or need repairs.
Peterson said most equipment status
tracking still is a manual process, with
physical tags on chassis, a process that
can be very time-consuming and ineffective.
That manual process should be used
less in the future, since BOES now is on
track to be in place at all BNSF intermodal
facilities by the end of 2017.
"Ultimately, BOES will remove the
manual effort of tracking chassis status,
and allow for automated and real-time

status reports around key fleet performance metrics," according to Peterson.
Electronic record-keeping will provide
a better method for culling known, defective chassis from the general population,
while more efficiently allocating repair
resources to address defects.

Safety Benefit
"An additional benefit is in the area of
safety. Anytime we can utilize a system to
reduce or remove manual inventory processes, we reduce safety exposures associated with these functions," he added.
"We are starting to see a trend in the
right direction and are making good progress as BOES is rolled out," Noel said.
He explained that evidence of the improvement includes a drop in road failures
and a decline in the number of times a
driver has had to obtain a new piece of
equipment through a "flip" because the
initially placed chassis was defective.
TRAC intends to use BOES at additional facilities beyond the BNSF network,
he added.

- Chad Peterson, BNSF
Several other railroads and chassis
providers have shown an interest in
the BOES system, said Debbie Sasko,
assistant vice president of intermodal
information services for IANA. Outreach
will continue through webinars and direct
communications to educate companies
on the benefits and efficiencies that the
BOES system can provide to intermodal
equipment providers and facility
operators.

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Find out what we can do for you at port-montreal.com/why-montreal

PRODUCTION EN STUDIO
DOSSIER

"Ultimately, BOES will
remove the manual effort
of tracking chassis status,
and allow for automated
and real-time status
reports around key fleet
performance metrics."

PROJET

May/June 2017 | Intermodal Insights
VERSION

http://www.port-montreal.com/why-montreal

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