DB CARGO, a leading rail cargo company in Europe, has rolled out myRailportal for its customers to order transport services
DB CARGO, a leading rail cargo company in Europe, has rolled out myRailportal for its customers to order transport services. The key component of the business to business (B2B) portal is the AX4 logistics platform from AXIT, a Siemens company. DB Cargo's customers now have an end-to-end digital environment for managing their freight consignments - everything from ordering empty railcars and booking transports to tracking individual railcars and issuing invoices.
'We used AX4 to develop a solution that offers our rail freight customers a full suite of IT services and complete visibility of all rail movements,' said DB Cargo head of customer service logistics Eric Pfaffmann.
myRailportal provides an interface where customers can check availability and request empty railcars by entering the type and number of cars needed along with the departure and destination stations. Once the order has been confirmed, customers can check its status and that of the actual transport as well.
AX4 collects tracking data from various rail systems and consolidates it down to the individual train and railcar.
MyRailportal uses this data to generate information on departure and transit times and shows the current position relative to the planning targets, including any deviations.
Graphical reports and dashboards can be generated for analysis.
DB Cargo also offers an app built on AX4 mobile for reporting damaged railcars. Customers logged into their myRailportal account can take a photo and report the damage to customer service, replacing manual report forms with a fully digital documentation process that is faster and more cost-effective.
