Biarri Rail to deliver efficient locomotive planning at KCS

Biarri Rail, a global provider of planning and scheduling software for freight railroads has landed a new contract with the Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCS).

Biarri Rail will deliver its cloud based locomotive master planning software — Boss MP Loco. The software will enable KCS to quickly plan and optimise locomotives, leading to improved efficiencies and utilization of critical railway assets.

KCS’ Vice President Strategic Operational Planning, Mike Walczak said: “We engaged Biarri Rail to perform a Proof-of-Concept using the Boss MP Loco software and this clearly demonstrated that we could use the software package to identify potential fleet efficiencies and help make strategic decisions on the deployment and positioning of our locomotive fleet.

“For example, we were able to run multiple scenarios examining how many of our fleet could be equipped for Positive Train Control (-PTC) based on how and where we may choose to assign power on our cross-border trains that operate in both the US and Mexico.Our current locomotive planning tools do not provide optimization or ‘what if’ capabilities to deliver the most efficient plan.

“The Biarri Rail software has an intuitive user interface and powerful optimization algorithms, which will provide a step change in our planning capability. Based on the successful outcome of the Proof-of-Concept we are now implementing Boss MP Loco into our planning environment.”

Biarri Rail CEO, Tom Forbes said: “We are excited to be working with the team at KCS to drive this innovation with them. Boss is a new concept in railroad planning and scheduling software as it brings man and machine together; excellent algorithms, and simple user interfaces, that deliver real world results.

“This contract with KCS combined with the recently announced contract with TasRail in Australia really speaks to the flexibility of the Boss platform to provide value for railroads of differing sizes and types.”

For more information visit www.biarrirail.com

12th Feb 2018