For CN Rail, the state of assigning and reporting work to the hundreds of railworkers across the country was stuck in the 20th Century. When starting their shift, railworkers would access their workorders via a terminal and then print out their jobs for the day (often times this was up to 200 pages of paper that they had to carry around with them all day). Furthermore, by the time they printed the work, the information was often out-of-date and required to manually changed.

While at Fjord/Accenture, I worked to develop a mobile reporting solution that would allow railworkers to access their entire job list via a digital device and would also allow for instant notifications and reporting, ensuring they always had the most accurate information and could relay any information or concerns instantly to customers or to the control station.

MRS DASHBOARD

The Reporting Solution’s dashboard gives insight to everything the CN employee needs to start their day: 

• the weather forecast is easily accessed, which helps provide insight on any potential delays or issues

• the train they will be working on as well as the team gives them immediate context of who they will be in communication with

• the Customers list shows them the work they will be doing (spot = adding cars to a train, pull = removing cars from a train, intraplant = switching cars from one track to another)

• the Special Handling list gives them insight into any cars with special considerations (based on its contents, type of car, etc.)

Because work can be updated at any time, it was also important to implement a labelling system that would allow for late requests, releases, and any cancellations to be communicated.