Quasar Platform Improves Rail Capabilities

Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-Chief
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Quasar Platform, an end-to-end supply chain visibility platform developed by Calgary, Alberta-based Cando Rail & Terminals, has added new features to its Shipment Management application that “significantly improve industrial shippers’ ability to track and manage their railcar shipments.”

Quasar’s Shipment Management software now combines GPS data with rail waybill, car location message, and event status updates, bringing shipper, inbound customer railcar and Class I data together. The company has a partnership with Railinc it says “enables it to bring in data that in other systems is missing or incomplete. Using GPS and geospatial enabled car location messages, Shipment Management tracks railcars at origin, in-transit and destination. This means customers no longer need to go to different websites, customers, ports or transloading facilities to track railcars. And real-time updates and data indexing means customers always have the most recent data record no matter what the source.” 

GPS sensors connected to mesh sensors provide real-time information on railcar health. Working with hardware partners, Quasar Platform provides telematic monitoring solutions for railcars, including sensors that monitor impacts, temperature, digital inputs, handbrake position and hatch status. As a sensor-agnostic platform, Quasar Platform uses different sensors for different visibility needs.

Using Arc GIS as the base, Quasar Platform brings  geofences, described as “a virtual geographical bucket with ‘trip wires’ that enable customers to determine exactly when a railcar arrived and departed a location. These geofences automatically track dwell, enabling automated and advance reporting on dwell across the network.”

“With these new features, Quasar Shipment Management goes beyond the basic ‘where’s my railcar’ tracking and health monitoring tools,” explains Quasar Platform General Manager Corrie Banks. “The foundation of Quasar Platform is to get as much data as possible. We call it our ‘dataverse.’ We are already collecting a lot of data for our customers and have now expanded and combined our data sources even further. We provide more than 70 data connections including data from yards, shippers, Class I’s, AEI readers, emails and PDFs. And we provide the insights into all of that data in one place. We have combined GPS geospatial data with industry data and industry data with geospatial data. This unique view of railcar shipment data ensures that all the information that our customers need to manage their assets is all in one place.”

Quasar Platform is 100% cloud-enabled, “ensuring that data is accessible from any browser on any device.”

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