Car Repair Billing at CP

Car Repair Billing at CP
John Kushnir – CP
Stephen Josey – Railinc
SESSION CODE: 2392
LEARNING POINTS
 Industry partnerships – their importance
 The challenges of putting square pegs in round
holes
 Building blocks and non-disruptive implementation
Car Repair Billing – what and why
 Regulatory requirements for freight car safety, prescribed by the
Federal Railroad Administration and Transport Canada
 All roads maintain and report repairs to railcars as prescribed by the
Association of American Railroads (AAR) rules
 These Rules provide safe seamless railcar interchange throughout
the North American rail system, outlining responsibilities for
mechanical condition while setting equal standards for all equipment
providers
 Purely “Corrective Maintenance” to your equipment per the FRA and
AAR Rules
 A necessary evil as railroads are in the transportation business, not
the repair business
Car Repair Billing – how big is it (2014)
 Billing Marks (railroads sending bills) – 600+
 Car Owners (receiving bills) – 1800+
 Number of freight cars = ~1.5 million
 Number of billing transactions – More than 12 million
 Value of AAR Repair Billing – More than $1.4 billion
Car Repair Billing – our CRB journey
CMIS pure billing (1987)
CMIS + RBAS billing plus audit of payables (1990)
CIM + RBAS + Weston Wheel shop system + LIMS (1996)
CIM + LIMS + WESTON + WABTEC (2004 - 2012)
CIM + LIMS + CIMBAR + WABTEC (2012 - 2015)
The car repair world was stove piped – no integration with our ERP system
Car Repair Billing – the problem at hand
 We have, and continue to spend too much to support
a non-core part of our business
 Both dollars and effort
 Current CRB applications are all stand-alone systems
 Keeping all in synch and working is a challenge
 Without integration with our ERP – we had inadequate
visibility to ensuring we were recovering our costs,
managing inventories etc…
 For example – We rely on cycle counts instead of the power of
the ERP system
Car Repair Billing – what did we want
 Out of the car repair billing and rules maintenance business!
 Let somebody else deal with AAR driven rule changes
 Tradespeople to enter parts and labor and have the system derive
the AAR billing job codes through a easy to use UI.
 Reduced training, initial and ongoing
 Integration with our ERP – reporting of repairs to be a driver for
improved asset performance.
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Improved inventory management – relieve the inventory when the part is applied
Productivity measurement – collect actual time for a job and compare to standard
Profitability measurement - ensure cost recovery
Compliance to train inspection rules – integration with our operating systems
Looked for an industry solution – couldn’t find one
Car Repair Billing – the path to SAP
 Building blocks and non-disruptive implementation
 We can’t afford to mess up the monthly car repair bill
 Partnered with Railinc for the billing solution (CRMS)
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Industry partner manages industry driven rule changes
 Built the back office first and pointed the legacy system to CRMS
 Mitigated risk by having the old and new running in parallel
 At cutover we ran bills in both systems
 If new system was solid – allowed us to turn off the old billing system
 If we ran into a problem with the new – we could still put out our bill through the old
 Were we successful?
 Yes – new ran as expected and we were able to decommission WABTEC.
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
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Maintains and translates industry and custom
reference data, with periodic reference data
updates sent to CP CRB (SAP).
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Validates SAP work orders sent via web services
against industry rules and applies pricing according
to the industry price master or custom tables.
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Errors are identified real-time.
Management of billing rules remains with Railinc.
Generates invoices and manages exceptions.
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Eliminates duplication of effort by CP.
Streamlines monthly invoicing process,
Enables exception tracking.
Manages audit and accounts payable.
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Audits received invoices for accuracy,
Manages counter-billing and rebuttal processes.
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
Four Clicks to work:
 Sign on
 Select where you want to go
 Enter selection criteria …
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
 Work orders requiring attention are displayed.
 Select a work order.
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
 CRMS returns work order details.
 Chevrons indicate lines requiring attention…
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
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Click on the chevron(s) to see the error message(s).
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CRMS allows you to make corrections, reprocess the bill.
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Go to next work order.
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Once CRB – front end – is rolled out – almost all of these errors will be caught prior to entry
into the billing stream
Car Repair Billing – Railinc Car Repair
Management Services (CRMS)
 Audit module identifies exceptions with received invoices.
 Exception letters generated.
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
 The front end
 Complexity of interfacing with ops and industry systems was a challenge – but
manageable.
 Concepts of scheduling and planning are not easy to implement in the car space
– we are a break fix world.
 SAP doesn’t have native functionality to support car repair billing.
 We wanted to create a simple single look for all asset related SAP
functionality.
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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EMIS to SAP - Industry Car Data - AAR attributes - 70,000 records/day
(UMLER data)
R1 to SAP - Industry Alerts - loaded 1.8 million records - 4,000 records/day
R3 to SAP- CP Alerts - 300 records/day
EME Bad Order to SAP - 4,000 records/day
EME Track/Train to SAP - 110,000 records/day
Train to SAP - 60,000 records/day
Consist to SAP - 20,000 records/day
Railinc - up and running in SAP production
Component registration
Partial registration
Pricing and validation
Outbound - will be turned on when entering transactions in production
SAP to EMIS
SAP to R1
SAP to EME
The interfaces – high degree of complexity
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
Locomotive
Car
 Single UI for easy access to all required functionality
 Role based permissions
 Includes external links like CRMS
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
 SAP is configured by user
 KUS0010 signed in – so default location is Saratoga
Springs
 Select the track where the cars you are working on
are spotted
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
 SAP returns
 Cars on track, integrated with operations data
 User decides on what next action is to be
 Example – Quick Bill
Many of the interfaces to ops and industry systems meet on this screen
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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SAP
 Returns task list (applicable job codes) for a quick bill (AAR Group Billable)
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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User selects the work they performed on the car
 Click Continue
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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SAP populates the work order with the basic billing info
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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SAP leads the user
through a series of
dialogues to
complete the billing
line.
Car Repair Billing – SAP and CRB
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User also enters actual times (duration) for repair completion
 For Group Billable – time is entered at the work order level and split
between tasks
 For other repairs – time is entered at the task level
On TECO – material relieved and time sent to CATS
KEY LEARNINGS

Industry partnerships – their importance
 Concentrate on your core competencies and leave the rest to others.
 CRMS/CRB enables us to free up the equivalent of 1employee who used to spend
much of his time keeping our legacy car repair system up to date with rule changes
plus an additional employee who used to audit all wheel repairs prior to billing.
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The challenge of putting square pegs in round holes
 Making SAP work for us in a break fix environment with the inventory of equipment
being a moving target
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Building blocks and non-disruptive implementation
 Build in pieces with a view to avoiding “big bang” implementation
 It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
 Non-disruptive model extends to roll-out
STAY INFORMED
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SESSION CODE: 2392
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