Norfolk Southern Executive Vice President and Chief Information & Digital Officer Anil Bhatt

But I feel very comfortable in saying that the improvements that we have seen are very positive and, and, and assuring that we are moving in the right direction.

So in, in simple terms, as you mentioned, uh, there were, there were always a lot of data available in different silos or buckets, if you wanna call them.

And the challenge has been to take all those data sources, whether it's, uh, positioning locomotive health, things that, that the, uh, information that the PTC system, the train-

Yeah

... control system gives you.

And taking all those different data sets and then blending them and having some sort of a big black box that [laughs] that can take all this stuff and filter it.

Yeah, exactly.

I-

And then distribute the information to the people who, who need it, whether it's a, uh, you know, a, a maintenance away gang that's, that's in charge of, uh, maintain- maintaining the rails and, and fixing flaws and fixing a, a, a bad weld or something to the car inspectors, to the customer who wants to go on their phone or on their, their computer screen and find out, "Where is my shipment? What kind of shape is it in?"

I ex- I could, I, I could not have said it better and, and you exactly articulated the thing.

And I think, you know, the only thing I can add to that is that availability of data and consolidation of the data and the purity of data and making sure that we have a, we have a very, very, uh, good quality management of the data allows us to even look at use cases that we may not have thought about.

So now-

Yeah

... we are, we are driving the, the inquisitiveness and we are driving the brain to go into a place wherein we would have never thought that is possible.

So when we me- do all these things, it's allowing to unlock more and more things that we can do to make sure that we are competing with the best out there.

You know, I'm sure you're familiar with the term big data and, and, uh, and the, the challenge with that or the problem w- with that is that there, there's all this big data and, and what do you do, what do you do with it? And, and I think, uh, as an industry we're, we're reaching a point where we know what to do with it, and we know-

Yeah

... how to process it, and we know how to get it to where, how to get it to where, where it's needed.

Would you, would you agree with that assessment?

Definitely.

I think, you know, um, competition drives, uh, inquisitiveness around how can I be better? For myself, uh, having worked in industries wherein data accumulation and, and customer reach has been very, very key for our success, when I came out here, I saw exactly the same thing that you just now said, Bill, is that how do we make sure that availability of this big data, somebody calls it l- data lake, somebody calls it big data, so whatever we wanna call it, but how do we infer that? How do we make sure that it drives insights that really can unlock the value for the business is the key out there.

And it could be in operations, it could be in commercial, it could be even the administrative, um, um, you know, domain within your own company wherein, you know, you are giving information and avail- making information available to your, uh, to your people so that they can make better decision at the management level out there.

So, you know, we have couple of tools, uh, around that which, uh, I would love to talk, uh, but, but yeah, it means that data is the key out there and data is the king.

I'll make an analogy here, a food analogy.

Uh, you called it a data lake.

But I feel very comfortable in saying that the improvements that we have seen are very positive and, and, and assuring that we are moving in the right direction.

So in, in simple terms, as you mentioned, uh, there were, there were always a lot of data available in different silos or buckets, if you wanna call them.

And the challenge has been to take all those data sources, whether it's, uh, positioning locomotive health, things that, that the, uh, information that the PTC system, the train-

Yeah

... control system gives you.

And taking all those different data sets and then blending them and having some sort of a big black box that [laughs] that can take all this stuff and filter it.

Yeah, exactly.

I-

And then distribute the information to the people who, who need it, whether it's a, uh, you know, a, a maintenance away gang that's, that's in charge of, uh, maintain- maintaining the rails and, and fixing flaws and fixing a, a, a bad weld or something to the car inspectors, to the customer who wants to go on their phone or on their, their computer screen and find out, "Where is my shipment? What kind of shape is it in?"

I ex- I could, I, I could not have said it better and, and you exactly articulated the thing.

And I think, you know, the only thing I can add to that is that availability of data and consolidation of the data and the purity of data and making sure that we have a, we have a very, very, uh, good quality management of the data allows us to even look at use cases that we may not have thought about.

So now-

Yeah

... we are, we are driving the, the inquisitiveness and we are driving the brain to go into a place wherein we would have never thought that is possible.

So when we me- do all these things, it's allowing to unlock more and more things that we can do to make sure that we are competing with the best out there.

You know, I'm sure you're familiar with the term big data and, and, uh, and the, the challenge with that or the problem w- with that is that there, there's all this big data and, and what do you do, what do you do with it? And, and I think, uh, as an industry we're, we're reaching a point where we know what to do with it, and we know-

Yeah

... how to process it, and we know how to get it to where, how to get it to where, where it's needed.

Would you, would you agree with that assessment?

Definitely.

I think, you know, um, competition drives, uh, inquisitiveness around how can I be better? For myself, uh, having worked in industries wherein data accumulation and, and customer reach has been very, very key for our success, when I came out here, I saw exactly the same thing that you just now said, Bill, is that how do we make sure that availability of this big data, somebody calls it l- data lake, somebody calls it big data, so whatever we wanna call it, but how do we infer that? How do we make sure that it drives insights that really can unlock the value for the business is the key out there.

And it could be in operations, it could be in commercial, it could be even the administrative, um, um, you know, domain within your own company wherein, you know, you are giving information and avail- making information available to your, uh, to your people so that they can make better decision at the management level out there.

So, you know, we have couple of tools, uh, around that which, uh, I would love to talk, uh, but, but yeah, it means that data is the key out there and data is the king.

I'll make an analogy here, a food analogy.

Uh, you called it a data lake.