Case Study: Norfolk Southern Corporation achieves real-time visibility and operational efficiency with TIBCO Software

Norfolk Southern Switches to Efficiency, Visibility, and Customer Service

Norfolk Southern, a leading North American rail carrier operating roughly 20,000 route miles and managing hundreds of thousands of assets, faced rising customer expectations as it shifted toward intermodal freight. Legacy systems, point-to-point messaging, and inconsistent data made it hard to provide the real‑time visibility and high service levels required for efficient asset stewardship and faster project execution.

Starting in 2010 the company implemented TIBCO’s integration and analytics suite (ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks, Enterprise Message Service, BusinessEvents, and Spotfire) with professional services to build an event‑enabled, centralized data platform, APIs, and a mobile app for truckers. The solution delivered near‑real‑time, coherent data and faster time to market, improving terminal efficiency, increasing capacity and railcar utilization, reducing contractor and rental costs, and enabling accurate shipment tracking and alerts—efforts recognized with a TIBCO Trailblazer Award and laying the foundation for predictive analytics.

Norfolk Southern Corporation

Fred Ehlers

Vice President of Information Technology