Field Research

VLI Headquarters

Main Operational Control Centre (OCC)

• UNILOG is very archaic and manual

• Operational Control Center
• In the OCC the communication is done with the trains via satellite
• Even the temperature of the rails influences the operation, and everything is received in the OCC (this is received in the ACT, which connects with UNILOG)
• Some OCC KPIs: hours stopped, hours circulating

Digital Transformation and VLI University

VLI Santa Luzia Station

• In case of unforeseen circumstances, you have to ask for authorization to release the train or not and justify the factors to the customers. To withdraw wagons, there is an increase in the departure time and it affects the efficiency metrics.

• When they receive a train loaded by the client, there is a lot of reordering to keep all the wagons and equipage in correct order.

• This reordering is transferred to the control room by radio or Whatsapp, and the list is later inserted into the system (very manual process).

• The staff needs the system to warn them about restrictions in a train formation. This is currently verified from a printed train report, manually.

• Users feel the system wasn’t designed with the end user in mind.

• The system doesn’t prevent them from errors on the operation.

• They use a lot of other parallel tools, such as spreadsheets, because the system is very limited.

VLI Eldorado Yard

• The operator needs to go out to the yard to with a clipboard to write down the code and position of each wagon manually

• When network problems happen, they can't use the system, not even offline.

• They have to print a lot of documents which could be digitized.

• UNILOG has no filters to search for specific records

• “We have too many systems being used for the same operation"

• If there’s any instability on the system, they need to form the train manually, on a spreadsheet, and later input that on the system. However, this can lead to many errors and manipulate metrics.