MES - Rail Car

Bartow, Florida - Mosaic Fertilizer, one of the world’s major producers of fertilizers, recently deployed a unique computing/communication system to track rail cars on their facility. This new system generated $300,000 in savings during its first year of implementation.

This system was designed and developed with a combination of new technologies for the implementation of a Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

The MES system automatically tracks rail cars in and out of the plant and maintains a history of activity each time the rail car comes on site. The system also tracks rail cars through each operation until the rail car leaves the site. The availability of each rail track at the site is monitored as well.

A magnetic transponder rail car reader at the plant entrance/exit
A rail car reader/weigh-in-motion operation
A wireless solution for the rail crew to track and monitor the yard status
A wireless solution for inspectors to accept/reject (with cause) rail cars as they come out of the cleaning operation
A wireless solution to record bar-coded seals as they are placed on the rail car
A new graphical load out control system integrated into the new tracking system
Direct integration to the company’s lab analysis system
Direct integration to the company’s Datalogix’s GEMMS business system to account for production and to generate instantaneous bill-of-lading assignment as soon as a rail car is filled
A site-wide system providing complete logistical tracking, outbound operations monitoring and reporting