Project Title: Rail Fleet Management System for Stora Enso

The Challenge

Integrated paper, packaging, and forest products company, producing publication and fine paper, packaging board, and wood products. The Group has over 46 000 employees in more than 40 countries on five continents. Stora Enso has an annual production capacity of 16.9 million tonnes of paper and board and 7.7 million cubic meters of sawn wood products, including 3.3 million cubic meters of value-added products. Stora Enso’s shares are listed in Helsinki, Stockholm, and New York.

There was a need to ensure timely shipments and reduce costs generated by delays and non-target usage of vehicles. Necessity of improved personnel productivity and speedy data analysis called for a new solution to store and manage the data effectively.

The Solution

Digital Designed developed a system that allows loading information on vehicle locations and their mechanic data provided by the railroad informational agency into a centralized storage. This eliminates the risk of data being lost and allows the company to maintain a consistent, reliable source of information for easy analysis and report building. With the system, a logistics specialist can:

- Accurately pinpoint the current location of a railroad car, track its station-by-station movements (location history) and find out when the vehicle arrived on site;
- Quickly retrieve mechanic information for each vehicle and repairs performed up to date;
- Find out freight-related information — which goods are being carried by a vehicle, their weight, consignor etc.;
- Work with sets of vehicles and separate cars.

The system also provides analysis capabilities — on a mouse click, the user can find out how many times the vehicle was loaded over a period of time, the number of days under repair, its turnover and average trip duration.

Besides allowing its users to locate easily a railroad car, the system offers preventive measures to proactively address potential delays, ensure route compliance, and assist in lost vehicle recovery. The system is designed to generate an alarm in case a number of critical situations are detected. The rail fleet management system not only tracks the company vehicles, but also provides Stora Enso with the means to take care of its fleet. The system allows keeping repair history, identify repair patterns and predict approaching repairs (Preventive Maintenance), thus eliminating the need for costly emergency repairs. It informs the user when vehicles need to be serviced — maintenance reminders are based on mileage and/or dates.

Stora Enso received improved vehicle tracking and traceability that ensured increase in productivity. Total control of the company’s fleet daily operations maximized the availability of vehicles and ensured their proper use. The system also helped manage performance level of transportation service providers.
The user-friendly interface allowed Stora Enso employees to save significant amounts of time while searching for, viewing and analyzing data. Emergency alerts made it possible to reduce delays as well as ensure route compliance and preventive maintenance. Keeping track of the fleet's movements helped to keep costs down and allow the company to achieve higher level of performance and productiveness.

Tools and Technologies

Visual Basic 6.0
SQL Server 2005 Analysis Service
Microsoft.Net

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