CPR gets an Edelman - Canadian Pacific Railway Co. receives 2003 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement - Brief Article

Railway Age, June, 2003

Canadian Pacific Railway has won the 2003 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The award, recognized as the "Tech World Series" and sought after by operations researchers and planners around the world, is presented by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS[R]).

CPR won for "Perfecting the Scheduled Railroad: Model-Driven Operating Plan Development" by Phil Ireland, Rod Case, and John Fallis of CPR and Carl Van Dyke, Jason Kuehn, and Marc Meketon of Multi-Modal Applied Systems, Inc.

CPR said it "turned to the concept of operating every aspect of the railway on a fixed schedule, The change in railway operating philosophy and practice has reduced our cost base by more than $285 million, has made service more reliable, and has increased profitability." Working with MultiModal, CPR developed an operating plan that optimizes routing and classification for each railcar movement and determines which trains to run. "We tailored the plan for recurring daily fluctuations in car volumes and developed contingencies for high- and low-volume days," says CPR. "Shortest-path-based algorithms within MultiModal's MultiRail application identified opportunities to reduce equipment miles, train-miles, and train-hours, thereby reducing operating cost and transit time and improving service reliability for shippers."