MultiModal's rail-oriented products include the MultiRail® integrated railroad operations planning environment and a number of add-on capabilities developed for this product. With this product, MultiModal and its clients have conducted analyses ranging from operations planning, railroad merger analysis, operational improvements, facility utilization, and a variety of other applications.

For the ocean and intermodal sectors, MultiModal (as a co-founder of Transportation Data, Inc.) built the industry standard database that provides the container shipping industry with shipping schedules. In its efforts with Transportation Data, Inc., MultiModal led the design and implementation of an Oracle-based database management system. Today, this system is the most widely used Internet application for customer access to carrier schedules.

In motor transportation, MultiModal developed a service design and scheduling system for use by two major LTL trucking firms that utilizes Oracle, PowerBuilder, and the Arc View geographic information system. On the transit side, MultiModal has worked on the analysis and design of fleet utilization improvements for a major northeast passenger railroad. We are active in a number of other system design and development efforts, as well as consulting services related to the application of our software, with various railroads, steamship companies, trucking firms, transit operators, and freight forwarders.

We developed specialized yield management tools for the passenger railroad industry.  These tools center around a detailed simulation of passengers booking itineraries.  The simulation contains sophisticated logic to mimic the behavior of yield management systems, as well as passenger behavior of seeking alternatives to their primary itinerary.

It has been used by a major European railway to determine the economic benefits of revenue management.  It can also be used to help develop specialized revenue management techniques.  Our Vice President of Development has extensive experience in this field having headed up similar efforts at US Airways and Conrail.

At one time or another, MultiModal's management have provided software, design, or consultation services to almost all of the major North American railroads, numerous other railways around the world, many of the major ocean carriers, government and regulatory agencies, foreign railroads, and a number of additional transportation service providers.

MultiModal has addressed a number of key design and implementation issues both in the development of the MultiRail® product and in other system development efforts. These issues include:

• PC-based, Windows product development

• Multi-user, LAN support

• Graphical User Interface (GUI)

• Transportation database design

• Windows controls (button/status bars, context sensitive help)

• Underlying commercial database usage (Paradox, Oracle and SQL Server in MultiRail^®, FoxPro/Oracle in ESG)

• Standard Windows design (MDI windows, interface design experience)

• Established communications protocols to other systems (import/export, trip plan transactions)

• Use of commercial report writers

• Object oriented design

• Trip planning technology and algorithm design

• Printing/plotting support

• Expertise and familiarity with multiple database application development tools and 4th generation products, programming languages, and installation toolkits

• Thorough understanding of transportation/logistics issues

• Data integrity and database management capabilities

MultiModal has extensive expertise in the fields of transportation and logistics. This expertise includes both formal education and practical experience in the design, development, and application of transportation related computer systems, and participation in numerous studies of transportation problems. MultiModal staff members have led or participated in the design and implementation of numerous computer systems both at MultiModal and at prior employers including:

• MultiRail^®, an integrated environment for the design and management of railroad operating plans, in use by all of the largest North American railroads

• At least five different railroad operating plan design (scheduling, blocking, and trip planning) models that became standards in the industry

• At least three different real-time equipment management systems for intermodal trailers, international containers, and domestic rail cars (empty repositioning systems, including forecasting of empty supplies)

• Several systems for the management of logistics services being provided by two different international container lines

• The database and database management tools used to maintain a schedule database of international container line schedules

• Numerous graphics capabilities for the display of transportation data in the forms of maps and time-distance diagrams

• A system for the development of customer oriented service packages for LTL trucking which includes integrated geographic information system capabilities

• Tools for the analysis of locomotive fleet requirements

• Various crew scheduling and requirements models for the airline and railroad industries

• Yield management tools for use by both airlines and railroads

In addition to working on the design and implementation of the systems listed above, MultiModal's staff has also participated in numerous studies, which have given us a deep understanding of how transportation companies work, and the nature of their information systems needs. Most of the systems listed above utilized operations research techniques including various forms of optimization and improvement heuristics.

MultiModal's technical staff members have actual implementation experience with many of the desktop databases available on the market today (Access, Paradox, FoxPro, Dbase, etc.) and client-server databases (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase, etc.). They have also incorporated database-independent technologies into some of their software, and are aware of the drivers and commercial access products available for implementation of these capabilities.

A number of our staff members have led or participated in database design efforts for major transportation systems, and are versed in relational database design, implementation, fourth generation language products and toolkits, entity relationship modeling, data flow diagrams, and CASE tools. They have conducted assessments of database-management application development tools on numerous occasions.

Similarly MultiModal has experience with a variety of object oriented languages and development environments including C++, Turbo Pascal for Windows, Delphi, Java, Builder, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Access, and Power builder. We have reviewed and tested a variety of report writers, graphics display tools, database access products, and VBX/VCL-type objects.

A number of our employees have also had mainframe experience, and in particular have worked with data extracted from railroad car movement systems, waybill systems, car accounting systems, blocking systems, and train schedule systems. Many of our efforts rely on extracting data from mainframe or legacy systems, and manipulating this data prior to formal use of the data. We have regularly worked on a cooperative basis with client’s MIS and analytic staff to develop methods for extracting data from legacy systems for use in MultiModal developed systems.

Almost all of our development work is done in the Windows environment, and almost all of our efforts utilize a commercial database. We generally do our development work in either compiled language products such as C++, or in rapid development environments such as Power Builder. We utilize third party software libraries for many system components including interfacing to Windows, development of graphics, access to databases, and generation of reports.

We have followed both traditional design and implementation methods, and rapid application development approaches. We do not utilize a fixed approach to development, preferring to tailor our approach to each client’s needs. Almost all projects consist of a design phase followed by one or more implementation phases. We are increasingly relying on the use of a prototyping phase to both complete the design and initiate the implementation process. Most design phases include the development of a functional requirements specification, a database design, and one or more process flow and algorithm designs.

The process of designing screens, reports, menu layouts, and logical flow designs is increasingly being replaced by the combination of a catalog of system components containing brief descriptions of each component and the development of a prototype. We test all of our software incrementally throughout the development process. This is generally done by exercising all of a system’s functions, and by conducting sample analyses or applications of the software using test data. We prefer to obtain actual data from our clients to improve the quality of our tests. We also attempt to deliver software to our clients as early as possible so that the client has the opportunity to use the software prior to formal release.

We generally rely on in-house expertise for most development efforts. In some cases we use sub-contractors to develop help systems, and specific sub-systems such as a customized geographic information system component. We also periodically use academic experts to provide advice and oversee the design phases of projects.

For more information on custom software development by MultiModal please contact Kevin Foy.