To improve the efficiency of its fast-growing intermodal business, Canadian National Railway Company (CN) (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) has acquired Quintiq’s Mobility Server to improve the performance of its container pick-up and delivery operations. CN will utilise Quintiq’s Mobility Application to obtain real-time visibility of container pick-up and delivery via smart phones.

CN, a rail industry leader that has 22,000 employees and operates the only transcontinental network in North America with more than 20,000 route-miles of track linking three coasts, offers integrated transportation services including rail, intermodal, trucking freight-forwarding, warehousing and distribution.

CN delivers more than 1,000 containers daily in its intermodal business that reaches close to 75% of the U.S. population and all major Canadian markets. Currently implementing Quintiq’s Logistics Planner solution, CN has chosen the Quintiq Mobility Server to deploy mobile planning swiftly and efficiently among its pick-up and delivery fleet.

Quintiq’s Mobility Server, developed as part of its mobility strategy, provides customers such as CN with a scalable, secure, fast and intuitive optimization platform that can be used to connect multiple mobile apps. Quintiq has specially configured a Mobility App for CN, allowing its drivers to directly interact with their schedules.

Capable of supporting local or individual decision-making and synchronizing these decisions with the Logistics Planner solution, the Mobility App enables individual users to participate in the scheduling process, while the Logistics Planner solution ensures, at the same time, that the optimal schedule outcome is maintained.

Quintiq’s Mobility Server, along with the Mobility App, will enable the North American rail industry leader to maximize its intermodal delivery performance while improving its utilization of drivers, tractors and containers. CN will reduce its operational costs by reducing the number of repositioning moves. Resource visibility will also improve as a result of implementing Quintiq’s map-based dispatching solution.

"CN was looking for a modern, cost-effective means of leveraging new driver scheduling technology. The implementation of Quintiq’s Logistics Planner will be simplified by adding in Quintiq’s Mobility App, further enabling CN to increase the quality of the services it provides to its intermodal customers and value to shareholders," said Pierre Arsenault, CN’s General Manager Intermodal Operations.

"Quintiq’s Mobility App will maximize CN’s intermodal delivery performance by fostering improved visibility and communication with the company’s truck delivery fleet, offering drivers, and therefore customers, a better experience," said Victor Allis, CEO of Quintiq.