Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Procor Limited is a railway shipping car producing company based in Sarnia Ontario, with a focus and expertise in private rail car rental fleet. Procor manages a fleet of more than 31,000 conventional and special purpose tank and freight cars. Procor currently has a manual data entry and scheduling system consisting mainly of Excel tables that are hard to maintain and they are shared nationally across their offices. This system is very susceptible to errors. Through the proposed project Procor Ltd. is collaborating with Lambton College's Information Technology and Communication Research Centre to design, implement and deploy a state of the art, advanced distributed global rail car scheduling and management system (DGRCSM) for Procor's online or intranet-based rail car management and scheduling system. An in-house solution would provide Procor Ltd. the ability to meet all the current challenges they face and have a solution that they fully own, not relying on 3rd parties, and providing the company with the freedom from market changes and ensuring their ability to provide tailored services to their clients as they continue to expand their business. Lambton's research team team will work with the Procor team closely to develop and implement the new system. Procor will benefit from having a cloud based, real time system that is secure, trans-national and multi-user allowing for integrated management of their fleet with its support and maintenance built in. The solution aids in the enhanced flexibility of utilizing modern software development techniques that minimize overall cost, minimize disruption and lower security risks for the system that.