In the fourth quarter of 2024 First Analytics, contributed to a number of events and publications. In the spirit of sharing insights with industry professionals and practitioners, we point to some of them here. Forecasting We published an article in…
Railroads continually strive to improve employee and public safety. New tools have recently emerged to help them do that. Hype aside, railroads can embrace generative AI to address long-standing challenges and make impactful improvements. Generative AI’s capacity to analyze complex…
First Analytics will be co-presenting at the Railway Interchange 2024 LMOA Technical Conference. This event, which takes place October 9-11, 2024 in Chicago, is a part of one of the largest gatherings of railroad industry professionals, the Rail Supply Institute's…
In 2022, we published a blog post titled "It Will Take Days to Recover from Even a Single-Day Rail Strike," which highlighted the impact that a rail strike can have on a railroad network, and therefore, supply chains, businesses, and…
With severe weather making recent headlines almost daily, we thought it would be a good time to discuss how weather can be incorporated into analytical and machine learning models. Weather conditions can significantly impact business operations, and understanding these impacts…
We have published the Railroad Greenhouse Gas Expert plugin for ChatGPT to OpenAI's ChatGPT store. This plugin is primarily built from papers, reports, and other materials produced by Wayne Kennedy, a long-time subject matter consultant to First Analytics, along with…
As a firm which focuses on moving beyond data science to optimization, we recognize that there is a distinction between what is mathematically optimal and what is business optimal. As we enter into what is predicted to be the busiest…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have historically struggled with numerical data, primarily because they are, at their core, language models. But OpenAI has aspirations to move into the business intelligence and analytics spaces. One way is through the Advanced Data Analysis…
Fuel savings technologies, such as top-of-rail friction modifiers or solid stick wheel flange lubrication, offer the prospect of savings millions of dollars in fuel cost. At the same time the investment is also in the millions of dollars. Putting a…
At First Analytics we have been using Generative AI tools, such as Large Language Models, to enhance our own productivity. Exercising caution is necessary, as we discussed in this June co-presention. With extensive work in the rail industry, we are…