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Rail News Home Rail Industry Trends

11/24/2004



Rail News: Rail Industry Trends

BNSF ranks sixth among top 100 technology savvy companies, magazine says


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Burlington Northern Santa Fe recently ranked sixth among the top 100 companies making technology advancements in InfoWorld magazine's annual poll. In late summer, the magazine's readers, technology partners and end-user firms submitted nominations for the rankings, which recognize companies that use cutting-edge technologies to further their business goals.

BNSF was chosen for implementing a voice train reporting system. Incorporating voice software from ScanSoft and Intervoice, the railroad used locomotive cab radios and cell phones as an interface to create a speech-enabled, interactive voice response system. Conductors use the system — which is designed to automatically convert voice into data that can be stored in BNSF's mainframe computers — to report train arrivals, departures, pickups and setouts.

The Class I "moved beyond technology that required conductors to write their reports or call them in to operators, [which would] take hours to get information entered into the company's data center," InfoWorld officials said in a prepared statement.

"We were looking to get more real-time information," said Shannon McGovern, BNSF director of network support systems, adding that data sometimes was up to 12 hours old.