Fleet Facts Fast
New
Fleet-Management
Power Tools
We at Procor and Union Tank Car are doing
everything possible to maximize your logistics power.
Here are the latest enhancements to your growing stock of fleet management
tools.
June 2009 Enhancement
Car Planned Service (CPS) and Customer Requirements
- Car Planned Service replaces the PIM/Projects details previously in Link-Net. Car Planned Services are mechanical conversion, repair and inspection programs that are customer requested or industry/regulatory mandated.
- Procor Customer Requirements and UTC Ready-to-Load have been replaced by a new Customer Requirements document. Your requirements are kept on file to ensure we meet your needs.
September 2008 Enhancement
UTLX Repair Invoices and Open Obligations
(Union Tank Car customers only)
Repair Invoices since January 2008 are now in UTLX Link-Net. Lease Invoices have been available since December 2001.
You can now
- search for Repair Invoices by date, invoice number, car and/or location
- list lease and repair invoices for which payment has net yet been received.
May 2008 Enhancement
Cars Due for Regulatory Retirement
The Link-Net Control Center will now display an alert if cars in your fleet are due to retire from service by December 31st of the current year. The retirement is per the AAR Interchange Rules age limitation. Note that this is a general rule and that future regulatory and/or AAR rule changes may alter your fleet's anticipated life.
Also the Link-Net Automatic Report Manager now has a 'Cars Due for Regulatory Retirement' report that can be emailed monthly if cars are due to retire by year end.
January 2008 Enhancement
Shop Request Form Enhancements
To assist in expediting your requests and to assist with safety you can now:
- identify gasket and o-ring requirements
- select last contents from a database of commodities
- select locations from a database of stations.
Also, Link-Net remembers entered/selected data, so on the next request you can optionally select from previous submissions.
July 2007 Enhancement
E-mail Address Login
Login by using your E-Mail Address rather than User ID. The intent is to reduce the number of User IDs you have to remember and to assist in keeping e-mail addresses up-to-date.
Enhanced “Build Your Own Report” (previously called “Fleet Data: Download and Report”)
You can now filter data rather than retrieving your entire fleet. The filter allows you to select a field (or fields) and specify a condition for the retrieval.
February 2007 Enhancement
Enhanced Mechanical
Details
A number of additional mechanical attributes are now available. This
provides a more in-depth encyclopedia of your leased fleet and enhanced
screen and report layouts. The extent of the additions are most notable on
the 'Mechanical Single Car' and the 'Fleet Data: Download and Report'
screens.
The enhancement is the result of a growing number of customer requests,
especially for Fitting and Inspection/Test attributes.
May 2006 Enhancement
Assigned Car Listing
(ACL)
A current Assigned Car Listing is now available via a link in the Leasing
Information section of the Control Center. This complements the ACL that is
optionally emailed at month end. The listing is in Excel format and
contains pertinent lease and mechanical details for your entire fleet.
January 2006 Enhancement
Enhanced Car Tracing
Car Trace now includes
- ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) details
in the trace response if the submitting railroad provided a trip plan
or if Steelroads was able to calculate the ETA
- inquiry into trace detail events from
previously submitted traces, and
- the ability to save a collection of car
numbers for repeated traces in a trace 'set'.
August 2005 Enhancement
Open Order Status
Automatic Report
Order Status is now available to you via e-mail. This report, in Excel
format, contains all of the same details you now see in Link-Net for open
orders. Please visit the Link-Net Automatic Report Manager facility to
identify the recipient and frequency of report distribution.
May 2005 Enhancement
Drawings/Designs/Components
A Drawings/Designs/Components option has been added to the Mechanical
Information section on the Control Center. When selected you will have
access to Basic Design Specifications and various component descriptions.
March 2005 Enhancement
(Union Tank Car
customers only)
The order status for new car orders now contains an estimated shipping
schedule that provides estimated deliveries by week.
December 2004 Enhancements
Enhanced
Qualification Reporting
The content and functionality of the qualification screens now include
- Rule 88 and Stub Sill qualifications
- check boxes to select/deselect PAST DUE, DUE
and COMPLETED qualifications
- check boxes to select/deselect IN SHOP,
INBOUND and TO BE SCHEDULED shop status's.
Additonal Mechanical Details
New details added to the mechanical display and reporting include:
Operating Platform, Maximum Weight on Rail, Shell Thickness, Head Thickness
and, for UTC customers, Air Connection and Siphon Pipe.
The field Operating Platform was added to the Mechanical Features Counts
facility that provides a frequency distribution analysis for your entire
fleet.
Enhanced Current Shop Status Screen
To provide better visibility of your shoppings the Current Shop Status
screen was enhanced to include
- counts for in shop, inbound and released in
the past week for each shop (these are in addition to the total count
for each shop)
- a link to view all shoppings at all shops
(so that all shoppings can be viewed at once).
Shop Request Drop
Down Maintenace
The existing Shop Request facility contains multiple drop downs of
previously entered values that greatly assist the input of shopping
details. The new drop down maintenance facility allows you to modify and/or
delete entries that are no longer valid.
October 2004 Enhancement
Emailed Provincial
Mileage Report
Beginning in October Procor customers can receive their Provincial Mileage
Report via email in PDF format.
August 2004 Enhancement
Emailed ACL
Beginning August 1st your Assigned Car Listing (ACL) can be automatically
emailed to you in spreadsheet format. Additional details have been included
in the report and with the spreadsheet format you can now sort/analyze
data, customize printing and import the data into other applications.
March 2004 Enhancements
New Control Center
The Control Center has been redesigned to optimize clarity and navigation.
Tools have been grouped under functional category headings for selection
convenience.
Shop Car Request
Two convenient shortcuts are now available which eliminate the requirement
to logon. For further details, please access the Short Cut link on the Shop
Car Request car entry screen or contact your local sales office or the
Link-Net Help Desk.
October 2003 Enhancements
Order Status
You can now monitor order fulfillment and track ordered cars into your
service. Open orders and orders fulfilled within the last 30 days are
available for the following order types: Replacement, Existing Car Lease,
New Car Lease and, for UTC customers, New Car Sale.
April 2003 Enhancements
Shop Car Request
If you are a UTC customer, you can now shop your car(s) through UTLX
Link-Net® and receive the same benefits listed below in the September 2002
enhancements.
To keep Link-Net® Shop Request the best, quickest and easiest way to shop
your car(s), we have made the following enhancements:
- You can now add attachments. Just press the
Add Attachments button
- Special Instructions field size is bigger to
accomodate more information from you
- A Return Disposition Address field is now
available.
January 2003 Enhancements
Ready-To-Load/Customer
Requirements
Now you can immediately view the ready-to-load specifications (for Union
Tank Car) and customer requirements (for Procor) we have on file. You can
view requirement details and attachments, plus submit new information
electronically.
Blue Book
This reference book published by Union Tank Car Company is available upon
login. It has many informative sections: commodities, specifications &
drawings, components, valves & fittings, covered hopper cars, coatings
& linings, stenciling & placards, terminology, regulatory agencies
& industry associations, and more.
Repair Customers
Repair customers can now login and access current shop status information,
create automatic reports, display action alerts and view customer
requirements. Also, the secure version of our shop car request tool has
fast and easy instant-view drop-down menus for your convenience.
September 2002 Enhancements
Shop Car Request
(Procor Link-Net® only)
We are working to ensure the Link-Net® Shop Request facility is the best,
quickest and easiest way to shop your car(s). The following upgrades help
you provide the necessary car-shopping information with a minimum of
computer keystrokes:
- Shop multiple cars with one request (when
all cars share the same requested shop, reason for shopping, return
disposition and last contents).
- Select reason for repair from our checklist
of options.
- Review outstanding projects from the lists
we provide for you. (login required)
- With the click of a mouse, choose from
drop-down lists (of disposition, special instructions and last
contents information). We get this information from your other recent
car-shopping requests. (login required)
- Skip over customer-contact data, which we
automatically input from the new Account Information facility. (login
required)
Account Information
This profile identifies you (by name, title, e-mail address, phone numbers
and password) and populates Link-Net® and our other corporate information
systems. For instance, the new Shop Car Request facility uses some of the
data to populate the Customer Contact portion of the request.
User ID and Password Recovery
If you forget your User ID and/or Password, use our new secure recovery
procedures for quick retrieval.
August 2002 Enhancements
Outage Gauge Tables
We improved the Outage Gauge Table screen layout and you can now print the
tables in PDF (Portable Document Format).
Time-Out
We increased the time-out period from 30 to 60 minutes. This means that
your session can be idle for up to 60 minutes before Link-Net terminates it
and requests you log in again.
Log Out
We added a log out button to the Control Centre to allow you to end your
Link-Net session immediately. You may wish to use this function to secure
your fleet data when you plan to be away from your workstation for an
extended period of time.
May 2002 Enhancements
Automatically
Distributed Reports
All automatically distributed reports in PDF format now have an improved
layout. Graphics, borders and color have been altered to improve
legibility. Any reports you had previously set up in PDF format will now
appear in the new look. You do not have to revise anything!
If you currently have reports set up in 'Text' format, we recommend you
change to PDF. The change to PDF is optional. Use the AUTOMATIC REPORT
MANAGER option to make the change.
Fleet Data: Download and Report
This new facility allows you to download and/or report on all cars in your
fleet. Approximately 80 mechancial and lease fields are available for each
car. Choose the fields that interest you.
The data comes to you in CSV (Comma Separated Values) file format and can
be opened by data bases, spreadsheets, text editors and other software
packages.
Reports are in PDF format and exploit Graphics, borders and color to
optimize legibility.
Outage Tools
Three 'fleet tools' now exist:
A Car Index lists all cars in your fleet, their outage tables and relevant
capacity attributes (i.e., tare weight, load limit and shell capacity).
A Table Index is available in the Mechanical Feature Counts facility. Your
fleet's outage numbers are listed with counts of the cars that use the
outage numbers.
You can now download your leased fleet details OR download outage details from
the combined Procor and UTC North American fleet for car types that match
your fleet's profile.
January 2002 Enhancements
Electronic Lease
Invoices
Customer-authorized recipients can now view current and historical invoices
in Link-Net and receive lease invoices via email. Contact your local sales
office to start up your electronic billing option.
Customer Action Alerts
When you log into Link-Net any or all of the following alerts are
automatically displayed. All of the alerts are easy to activate or cancel.
- Cars inbound to shop exceeding a specified (by you) number of days. This
assists in identifying late cars.
- Revised scheduled release dates. This alerts you to any changes in our
car release dates so you can plan car return into your service.
- Cars in shop requiring return disposition. This alert ensures cars are
not held by us longer than necessary.
- (Procor customers only) Cars held for customer approval. This minimizes
the time Procor holds your cars in its shops.
- Qualifications/tests due this year. This helps you in car maintenance
planning.
- Qualifications/test past due. This identifies cars requiring immediate
attention.
Distribute reports automatically
Three new reports (for a total of five) are available for automatic e-mails.
These are an alternative to logging on to Link-Net to access details. They
are:
- Lease Invoice
- Shop Alert (includes the four Bad Order Customer Action Alerts explained
above)
- Qualifications/Tests Due (includes the Qualification Customer Action
Alerts explained above).
October 2001 Enhancements
Distribute reports
automatically
You can now AUTOMATICALLY E-MAIL OR
FAX ANY NUMBER OF Bad Order Release Notification and Shop Status
Reports TO ANY NUMBER OF recipients of your choice. Just type in the
destination e-mail address(es) and/or fax number(s). Link-Net® issues Bad
Order Release Notifications and Shop Status Reports at 2:00 a.m. of the
date(s) you specify. Also, you can now receive your reports in three file
formats: text, PDF (Portable Document Format) or CSV
(Comma Separated Values). You decide. PDF optimizes the appearance of your
reports. CSV makes your reports compatible with most spreadsheet or
databases applications. A PREVIEW button immediately displays your
report according to settings you select. A click of the SEND NOW
button instantly emails or faxs your report to the destination of your
choice.
Find the Automatic Report Distribution
feature on the Link-Net® Car Control Center web page.
Sort and Download Data
Use new SORT buttons and
connected drop-down menus to display the data in a way that is most useful
to you. DOWNLOAD buttons bring displayed data right to your
workstation.
Download Outage Tables
You can now download individual Outage
Tables to your workstation in a CSV (spreadsheet compatible) file format.
Trace as many cars as you wish
You can now trace your cars SINGLY
(CAR-BY-CAR) OR IN GROUPS OF CARS. You can also trace cars, inbound and
outbound by shop, on the Shop Status Report page.
Customize Security Levels
You can now DEFINE DATA PROFILES that
make mechanical, outage and bad order data available to employees, with or
without leasing data, as your business deems necessary.
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