Improving Visibility for Automotive Rail Shippers

North American automotive shippers move more than one million railcars loaded with finished autos every year. In addition, these shippers must also manage a similar number of empty inbound multilevel auto rack railcars back to their manufacturing plants, plus more than 400,000 parts shipments in containers and railcars.

Though rail provides safe, efficient, and sustainable transportation of finished autos and parts, shippers face challenges including fragmented data; limited real-time visibility for rail shipments; and suboptimal coordination between manufacturing facilities, rail and motor carriers, distribution centers, and dealerships.

These gaps result in delayed deliveries, less efficient inventory management, and elevated costs. To improve lead times and build a more resilient supply chain, addressing these gaps is essential for optimizing overall logistics performance.

OEMs are most interested in understanding the flow of empty inbound auto racks to their facilities. It’s the empty car supply that allows them to move vehicles off their lots and out to sales distributors.

Advanced technologies powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are being applied to the location, condition, and status data generated by some 1.6 million railcars moving across the North American network every day. These new technologies are making it possible for auto manufacturers to reduce supply chain costs and improve performance, and to do so without the management burden many are under today. 

The value of these advanced technologies include:

• enhanced visibility for real-time, end-to-end tracking of freight rail shipments tailored to automotive supply chains;
• predictive analytics tools for predicting and managing delays, improving JIT performance and finished vehicle delivery;
• cost reduction from streamlined operations; and
• compliance and reporting with industry regulations.

With the right technology partner, automotive shippers can now turn their rail logistics into a competitive advantage by improving the reliability of ETAs for dealers, auto plants, and other key supply chain stakeholders.