Elevating the Top Line, Lowering the TCO
One of America's leading railroad companies, although satisfied with our ongoing management of its fleet and the improvements we had made thus far, pressed us to do even more. In its strategic planning, the company was setting its sights on capturing greater market share and intended to upgrade its fleet and support infrastructure, ready to pursue and serve the new customers.

The project was complex because the entire railroad industry was struggling under the weight of rising costs, a growing list of environmental regulations, and various other safety, technology and operating issues. Even as our client worked on fleet and organizational expansion plans in support of the railroad's growth goals, fleet management also had the difficult assignment of complying with corporate mandates that called for greater efficiency and cost improvement in fleet operations.

The paradox of simultaneously expanding the fleet operation's size while constricting its budget made any prospect of success, at least at the outset, seem impossible. Making matters worse were the fleet's makeup and working environment. The fleet was sizeable and consisted of both road and rail vehicles. The vehicles were designed with extremely complicated upfitting that had to meet a variety

of strict siding, rail, signal and mechanical requirements for operation in highly specialized work conditions. Vehicle production, the upfitting and the work of all providers in the supply chain had to be closely monitored and coordinated in order to meet the client's tight delivery schedules.

ARI responded with a program customized to the railroad's requirements over the fleet lifecycle. It covered resource allocation, data integration and communication, vehicle acquisition-build-upfit, maintenance and fuel management, process control, licensing, risk management, fraud prevention, driver safety, remarketing, and related administrative functions. We set up the systems, processes and performance-tracking that allowed our client to take advantage of controlled authorization, repair avoidance, rebates, warranty recovery, knowledge-based alternatives and effective vendor management.

Despite the operation's complexity, ARI's strategy saved the company $9,159,263 over the next three years. Of this total, improvements in maintenance management accounted for savings of $8,711,685 while fuel management saved another $447,578.