Good afternoon! All right. I hope everyone enjoyed their trip over to Bellevue this afternoon. Before we get started, I'm just gonna lead you all through a quick job briefing. My name's John Phillips. I'm the division engineer for the Lake Division. We're located here in the E5 Building at Bellevue Terminal. If we have to evacuate for any reason, we'll head out the doors directly behind you, take a left in the hallway, and exit into the parking lot. I'll be the last one out of the room. I have a headcount of everyone who's here, and we'll make sure everyone's in their place when we get out to the parking lot for further instructions. Our terminal superintendent, Will Washington, will be our designated 911 caller. He can also go to the entrance to the terminal, bring any emergency responders in if needed.
Can I get a quick show of hands for anyone who's CPR certified in the room? Take a quick look around you, make note of anyone nearby just in case we need them. We also have a defibrillator in the back of the room here with us today. I don't think we'll need it, but just in case, we have plenty of people trained on-hand to use it if we do. As far as hazards in the room, we don't really have any present with us today. I'll just ask, if you get up for any reason, please tuck your chairs in. Keep the aisles clear for anyone who has to walk down. If you need a drink or any coffee, you got your lunches, there's drinks and coffee in the back of the room here. Restrooms are directly across the hall. That should about wrap it up.
Any questions regarding the briefing? All right, I'll turn it over to Ms. Katie Cook.
Welcome to Bellevue. I think, Jeff, we're ready to go live with the webcast, right? For those joining us through the webcast, the slides of the presenters are on our website at nscorp.com in the Investors section. Transcripts and MP3 downloads of today's call will be posted on our website for your convenience. Please be advised that during this call, we may make certain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from those projected. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Additionally, keep in mind that all references to reported results, excluding certain adjustments, that is non-GAAP numbers, have been reconciled on our website in the Investors section.
Now, it is my pleasure to introduce Norfolk Southern's Mark Manion.
Oh, my. That sounds awfully official. Did everybody enjoy the train trip, I hope? Good, wasn't it? I tell you what, I know everybody's got a sandwich in one hand, but I'm gonna ask this anyway. We've got a bunch of people in our operating department that are with us here, and they made that happen, and I would just ask that we give them a short round of applause. They are a terrific group. Let me just take a minute to introduce our presenters. We've got some really good presentations. You can be the judge of that. First of all, first up, we're gonna have Gerry Hall, who is our Vice President of Network Management.
Gerry is gonna talk about the tremendous leverage that we get when we move merchandise traffic from origin to destination with as few stops as possible, keeping in mind that just think about it this way: the average merchandise car wants to stop two or three times to get on different trains to get to destination. So to the extent that we can cut those switching events out, we can save ourselves a lot of money. Bottom line is, this Bellevue project helps us do that in a big way, and he will explain how that goes about. Coming up after Gerry is gonna be Mark Dewberry. Mark Dewberry is our Chief Engineer of Design and Construction, and he's gonna walk you through the actual Bellevue build-out project that has been going on now for the last two and a half years.
And then lastly, Don Graab, who's our VP of Mechanical. Don's gonna wrap up, and he is going to talk about some specific examples where we're using new processes to our advantage. And of course, process, new, new better processes are a way that we are using to reduce our cost structure. He's got some great examples, including examples of new processes, specifically for our mechanical department. They're making a big difference. Okay, so those three presentations, I think you will really enjoy all of them. And with that, I'm gonna call Gerry up first. Gerry, you ready to take it away?
I'm ready.
Okay, here we go.
Okay, can you hear me? That's good. As you can see from this map detailing Norfolk Southern's origin-destination pairs, a great deal of our traffic moves through northern Ohio. With over 32,000 origin-destination pairs, the merchandise blocking network on NS is very complex. We determined several years ago, through our analysis, that Bellevue is physically located at the right spot on the NS network to minimize car handlings, reduce car miles, and reduce transit time. We realized that increasing our capacity at Bellevue to handle more traffic would result in improved service for our customers and reduce costs to NS. One of the significant costs of operating a railroad is having to handle or switch cars and rails or terminals, and yards or terminals, I said. Anytime you can bypass a yard or terminal with a shipment, it reduces cost.
Not only does it reduce the cost associated with the crew having to switch the car, but it also improves the velocity of the shipment, decreases the opportunity for mishandlings, and creates additional capacity in the terminals where the handlings have been eliminated. Now I'm going to show you a couple of examples of how expanding Bellevue will result in fewer handlings. A little later in the presentation, I will show you some more detailed examples of how this translates into an operating plan that reduces costs and improves service. As you can see here, traffic moving from the Philadelphia area to the BNSF in Chicago currently gets handled at four yards: Camden, Conway, Elkhart, and Chicago. With the additional capacity in Ohio, we will be able to accumulate all this traffic in Bellevue, build bigger blocks, and run a solid train to the BNSF, bypassing both Conway and Elkhart.
The handlings were reduced from 4 to only 2, Camden and Bellevue. Another example is traffic moving from the Southeast to the UP in Chicago. It currently gets handled at 3 yards, Chattanooga, Elkhart, and Chicago. Again, with the additional capacity in Bellevue, we'll be able to create blocks of cars with enough volume to run directly to the UP without having to be switched in Chicago. The handlings will be reduced from 3 down to only 2, Chattanooga and Bellevue. Now, the decision to expand our classification capabilities or the ability to sort cars at Bellevue was not just a seat-of-the-pants type decision. We have computer modeling tools that help us examine opportunities to improve our network. One modeling tool is the Algorithmic Blocking and Classification, or what we call the ABC system, which identifies and automatically routes traffic on the most efficient route.
ABC modeling told us the most efficient plan was to route more traffic through Bellevue. Another modeling tool is our Operating Plan Developer or OPD, which uses actual shipment data to examine what-if type scenarios and then quantifies the impact on our network. OPD allows us to take a proposed service plan and determine the impact on items such as car miles, train miles, and crew requirements. Now, by using both of these tools, ABC and OPD, it was evident that to improve service to our customers and to reduce our costs, additional traffic should be routed through Bellevue. However, there was not enough existing capacity at Bellevue to handle this additional traffic, particularly in the classification yard.
By increasing the number of classification tracks at Bellevue, it allows us to build additional classifications or blocks of cars, and then gather enough of this volume in these blocks to bypass handlings at other terminals. OPD helped us determine the volume changes we would see, not only at Bellevue, but also at our surrounding terminals at Elkhart, Conway, and Columbus. This slide highlights the number of additional trains that will originate and terminate in Bellevue, as well as the reduction that we will see at Elkhart, Conway, and Columbus. As you can see, after the expansion, the volume of traffic will increase by about 81% at Bellevue, and additional capacity will be created at these other surrounding terminals. OPD also determined the number of additional trains that would operate on each route as a result of the increased traffic flowing into Bellevue.
This slide identifies the traffic changes on the rail lines that come in and out of Bellevue in each direction. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to now show you some more detailed examples of how the increased class track capacity at Bellevue translates into an improved operating plan, allowing us to build additional and bigger blocks for trains so that we can bypass terminals and reduce transit times. For example, traffic moving from Moraine, Ohio, to the CN's Kirk Yard near Chicago, currently has to be handled at both Bellevue and Elkhart due to not having enough classification tracks in Bellevue to separate out the CN cars. Now, under the new plan, with additional capacity, a CN classification can be built right here at Bellevue, allowing it to bypass Elkhart, eliminating one handling and reducing the transit time by one day.
An even greater savings involves traffic moving from Bellevue to Detroit. Again, due to not having enough classification tracks in Bellevue to create Detroit blocks, we currently have to send all this traffic to Elkhart to be added to a train for Detroit. Under our new plan, with additional classification tracks, this traffic will be blocked at Bellevue for direct delivery to Detroit. This will reduce the car miles, save a handling at Elkhart, and reduce the transit time by 2.3 days. Now, another advantage of routing traffic on the most efficient route through Bellevue is it creates additional capacity at other terminals, which opens up cost-saving opportunities. For example, the additional capacity it created at Elkhart will allow us to perform what we call block swapping.
Block swapping is when you set a block of cars off of one train and then pick it up with a following train. The savings due to not having to send these cars over the hump to be reclassified. A good example would be Train 33E, that originates at Bellevue, moving a block of cars destined for the Union Pacific in Chicago and dropping it off at Elkhart. Then Train 35E, that originates at Elkhart, will now be able to pick up this block of cars and depart, rather than having to wait for them to be classified, saving an entire day of dwell. Now, there are 4 major categories of savings that was used to justify the Bellevue Expansion Project: Chicago area railroad savings, train overhead savings, yard locomotive savings, and network savings. I'm gonna go into a little detail on the major categories in the following slides.
In regard to the Chicago area railroad savings, as you can see from this map depicting the major rail lines in Chicago, it is a very complex gateway. Due to our current capacity constraints, we send traffic daily into the Belt Railway in Chicago to be switched and delivered to the other railroads. NS pays a switch fee for every car that is handled. With the expansion of Bellevue, we'll be able to create those classifications ourselves and provide direct interchange to the other carriers, eliminating the extra handling in Chicago. So this will not only reduce the switch fees paid by NS, but it will also improve customer service by eliminating that stop in Chicago. In regard to train overhead savings, when major winter storms strike northern Indiana, our production is negatively impacted at our classification facility in Elkhart.
In an effort to keep traffic moving, we send, or what we refer to as overhead, trains destined for Elkhart to other terminals to be switched. The added capacity at Bellevue will reduce the volume at Elkhart, which will make it more manageable during the winter months and eliminate the need for overhead. Winter storms will have little impact on the proposed block swapping opportunities that we talked about earlier. In regard to network savings, when we use the results of our operating plan developer and input the new plan into our cost system, we can determine the financial costs or savings associated with the change. As you can see, there are numerous categories of savings that are realized from the expansion of Bellevue.
Each one of these categories are a direct result of routing traffic on the most efficient route, building bigger blocks, building larger trains, and handling fewer cars or fewer times in our terminals. One excellent example of network savings is the reduction in car handlings, car miles, and car days associated with running a more efficient operating plan. These reductions translate into savings such as crew costs, terminal costs, locomotive costs, and car hire costs. In summary, the investment in the expansion in Bellevue will result in lower costs for Norfolk Southern and improved service to our customers. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mark Dewberry to explain about exactly what it took to construct this extra capacity at Bellevue. Mark?
Let me try this, light adjustment here. Is that, is that too dark in the front? Okay. Okay. This is Linwood, an NS classification yard 50 miles outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. This photograph was taken just before it opened in 1979. There hasn't been another classification yard built on NS lines since this one. 35 years later, we're doubling the capacity of Bellevue Classification Yard to handle growing traffic on our network. Bellevue is located about halfway in between New York and Chicago, at the intersection of five of our lines. This is a satellite shot of the facility. It's more than five and a half miles long. These colored lines show the 38 miles of track we're building for the expansion. So what is a classification yard, and how does it work?
Think of it as a 600-acre package sorting facility where the packages can weigh 140 tons each. When a train arrives at Bellevue Yard, it goes into one of 12 2-mile-long receiving tracks. From there, the cars are pushed over a hill called The Hump, and released individually or a few at a time on one of 2 lead tracks. At that point, the hump computer takes over and uses some heavy-duty braking equipment called retarders and a series of switches to guide each 140-ton package into one of 80 classification tracks, grouped with other cars going to the same destination. A lot more on the hump operation later. From here, several tracks of cars are pulled out of the classification yard using the pullback tracks, and moved to one of two forwarding yards that put together trains with the correct cars to go to the next destination.
At Bellevue, westbound trains are put together on the north side of the yard, eastbound trains on the south side. For this expansion, we've added two receiving tracks, we built a second lead over the hump. We added 38 class tracks to make a total of 80 classification tracks, the largest class yard on our system. We added one pullback and three forwarding tracks. In addition to that, we built a 4.5-mile long second main all the way around the yard. Those red lines on the left-hand side of the slide are the intersection of our five lines. From there, we can go north to Sandusky, with connections to our Chicago Line to go east and west. We can go east to Cleveland, south to Columbus, and west to Chicago, or routes through Fort Wayne or Toledo. I guess you could say this, this is a historic railroad junction.
It's been occupied by the New York Central, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Nickel Plate, and is still a junction between the Wheeling and Lake Erie and NS. The curves at this old railroad junction were really tight. The speed was slow. One of the first things we did in the project was reconfigure this historic junction with lighter curves, bigger switches, and a new signal system to increase the speed by 10 miles an hour for what will soon be 150 train moves a day through the junction. This is Bellevue Yard shortly after it opened in 1967. You can see the original idea was contemplated to build a second classification yard at some point in the future because half of this area was left undeveloped. 47 years later, that was a good idea.
Another part of that 1967 design, the car shop, the place where rail cars are repaired, is gonna end up in the middle of the class yard with no vehicle access. There's also no backup power to the yard. I'll go over in detail how we addressed each of those issues with the construction. So this is where we started in April 2012. We buried a lot of electrical conduit, we put in hundreds of hand holes so we could find the conduit after we buried it. We did drainage and electrical work. We put up high mast lights so the facility can operate 24 hours a day safely. We built a building where train crews report to work, and it has a control tower in it. This is Ranger Tower.
This building and the tower are located between the classification yard and the pullback track, where tracks of cars are selected to build trains. We built a mechanical building and an expedite track, where rail cars needing minor repair can be fixed quickly and put right back into service. We built a facility for our track and bridge forces, where they can meet, plan their work, and maintain the infrastructure around the yard and the surrounding routes. We built a soil nail wall. That's a concrete retaining wall you build from the top down with no foundation. We did it to provide road access beside the track and never touch the state's overhead highway bridge. We put in a pedestrian tunnel under the forwarding yard and the two main lines, so employees can get to work even if trains are blocking the track.
That's where the tunnel is, underground there between the employee parking and the administration building. That's a view walking underground, under the yard in the tunnel. That building is where you come up from underground, out of the tunnel on steps. That locomotive is on mainline number 1, and it's pulling a train. Those people there are two train crews. One crew has brought the train in, finished their tour of duty, the other crew will take it on to the next destination. This has become a crew change point because train crews know they can be where they need to be on time. Remember that heavy-duty braking equipment I mentioned on the hump? That's one of those pieces of equipment. That's a retarder. This is what slows the 280,000-pound rail cars when they're free rolling down a 3% grade.
It does this by pushing two metal bars together, squeezing on the steel rail wheels, using the force of compressed air. This makes a distinctive sound, known around the yard as the Bellevue Symphony, because it's a signal that trains are being built. The ground forces around this equipment are significant. We built a retaining wall right beside this master retarder, and on the right side of these forms, we dug a trench wide enough for two tractor trailers to pass each other and deep enough for them to be below the ground line. Those are the concrete supports for that wall. That rail car is on that master retarder. We had to tie the top of this wall back with rock anchors. Those are systems of cable twisted together, drilled diagonally into the ground until they're 26 feet into rock.
Then they're tensioned and tied to the top of the wall to hold it back. That's the wall holding up the ground around our trench. That's gonna be the back wall of the bridge that brings our new hump lead across the trench. Those are the supports for the wall on the other side, and all of this together makes our vehicle access to the car shop with our new hump lead coming over the top. There's a vehicle access to the middle of the class yard. That's the new hump lead. There's the old hump lead with a retarder. So this is where we were after 13 months of work. This is May of 2013. We built 3 buildings, we buried 42 miles of electrical conduit that will soon be carrying 145 miles of cable.
Our hump underpass is well underway, but it's not finished, and our 4.5-mile second main is on schedule to be complete by the end of 2013. In May of 2013, traffic projections indicated that we're gonna need this capacity by the end of 2014, sooner than we thought. The way to meet that new goal was to go ahead and build the class yard tracks in 2013 instead of starting them at the beginning of 2014, when they were originally scheduled. Two problems with that. Number one, 2013 was half gone. Number two, there were two buildings in the way up here. Closer look at them. Those are the buildings. The structures themselves were no big deal 'cause the new building, Ranger Tower, was ready to take their place.
But there was a lot of signal control and computer equipment and cabling associated with those buildings that was running the old yard. Our signal construction forces started in right away, running cable to the new building and moving that equipment. Our track forces built a connection to the middle of the class yard and started building tracks side by side that weren't hooked to anything on either end, and that was very slow. This is July. By August, that signal control's been moved, those buildings are gone. We've hooked into a live track, and we're bringing in ties, rail, and stone. You can see we've unloaded rock on about 5 tracks here to smooth the rails, build a surface on the track, but our track structure construction is running way out ahead of our rock delivery.
September, we've accelerated the rock delivery, and we're building a balanced job of smoothing the rails with surfacing and building the track structure. October, our track construction has cut off vehicle access to the car shop through the yard, but that's okay because our underpass under the new hump lead is finished and ready for service. November. On November the sixth, we opened up that second main line around the yard. We had added the class tracks to the 2013 schedule and kept our commitment to open the second main by the end of 2013. December, that marked the start of a really tough winter, but all the tracks and switches in the class yard are built. They're 75% covered up with stone and surfaced. This is the class yard now. Right now, the complex computer and signal work is going on to make this hump operation work right.
If you look at the hump area in this square, remember, we built a second lead over the hump. That lets us classify two sets of cars at the same time. It also enables us with this switch configuration here that's a double crossover. It lets us switch from either lead to the opposite yard. Each time we put a car over the hump, we've got 80 locations to organize that freight. There's the hump, the double crossover, the underpass, the new hump lead, and the old hump lead. Recall that one of the chores for this project was to add backup power. We did this by putting in 22 sets of generators throughout the yard. 13 of them are within the limits of this slide.
They back up lights, computers, buildings, switch heaters, compressors, power switches, everything considered essential to keep the facility in operation if there's a power outage. You'll see these generators all over the yard. They vary in size. Some of them will fit in the back of a pickup truck, others are as big as a garage. They all have the same color scheme, green on top, black on the bottom. This is a lap switch. These are the switches on the hump that lead to those 80 classification tracks. This is unique in that a rail car can come into this on one track and leave the switch on one of three tracks. This is one of the Bellevue retarders built in a shop. The rails the cars run on are built right into the equipment.
These cylinders on the side expand under the force of compressed air and push these two bars, called beams, right on the steel wheels. As I mentioned before, the ground forces on this equipment are significant. There's between 20 and 32 concrete supports, 20 feet in the ground under each one of these retarders. The retarders have to sit on a specific slope, 'cause if they don't, the cars aren't gonna roll right, computer's not gonna work right. That's looking down the new hump lead, down through the master retarder. You can see a second retarder before each group of tracks. When a car goes over the hump at Bellevue, a scanner reads a barcode on the side. It tells the computer the car's destination and its length. As the car starts down the hump, it's weighed, and an electric eye counts the number of axles.
A weather station on the hump is tracking the rainfall, the wind speed, the wind direction, and the air temperature, because all those things impact the rollability of a rail car on steel rails. Radar hits the car as it rolls down the hill, telling the computer how fast it's going. Electric circuits running through the rails of all 80 tracks are telling the hump computer the location of the first car in each track. The hump computer processes all of this information, lines the switches to the correct one of 80 tracks, operates the two retarders so that the car rolls into the track and couples up to the first car in that track at less than 4 miles an hour with no damage. Now, let's see what this trip over the hump looks like to one of our customers, 140-ton packages.
Now, these cars are being pushed up out of the receiving yard. The locomotive may be 50 cars back, it may be 100 cars back, and nobody's on that locomotive. This gentleman coming up on the right is the hump conductor. You can see that, belt pack control he's wearing. He was running that engine with that control, but at this point, he's turned control of the locomotive over to the hump computer. We're coming up over the crest of the hump, and he's releasing the car ahead of us. It's rolling away by gravity. Those squares in the distance with the red text on them, those are cut boards. They're telling the hump conductor whether to release the cars individually or a few at a time, up to five. At this point, we're about to be released. We're gonna be weighed between those white posts.
Just beyond those posts is a double crossover. If you look to your left as we go through that crossover, you'll be looking right down the new hump lead. Radar is hitting the cars, telling the hump computer how fast we're moving. We're coming up on the first retarder. A little bit of sympathy to slow the car. There's a lap turnout. We're coming up on the second retarder, the hump computer's last opportunity to slow the car before it couples up. There's some backup power stations, one on each side of the track. The first car in this particular track is way down in the yard. Now, imagine this happening 3,600 times every 24 hours. Probably look about like this. As you can see, adding rail infrastructure can be complex and expensive.
As I, as I'm sure you've heard today, NS has the processes in place to, to plan, look ahead, study alternatives, and select projects wisely, and then has the people to execute what's been selected. And that's what we've got here with Bellevue. Thanks. I'll bring up Don Graab now.
Well, good afternoon. While we are not afraid to spend capital dollars when it's necessary, process improvements are our first choice to achieve results. We recognize process improvements are the most responsive way to create capacity in the short term. Recent process improvements include... Crew redistricting, the Movement Planner feature of our UTCS, Unified Train Control System, and LEADER. Presently, we're directing resources to process improvements focused on terminals. Two big undertakings for 2013 and 2014 are our Engage and Insight initiatives. Engage is all about improving processes in terminals. Terminal operations are a big slice of our operating expenses. Through our Engage process, we've been able to standardize the way we do business, spread best practices, and cut costs. But today, I'm gonna talk in more detail about Insight, a process improvement program directed at car and locomotive shops, areas of my responsibility.
Our Insight program is an all-out application of the principles of Lean to shop operations. While the principles of Lean, for the most part, come from Toyota, the term Lean is largely an American name. Originally called the Toyota Production System, Lean is called a number of things by different companies. We choose to brand our Lean program with the name Insight. So Insight is Norfolk Southern's version of Lean, our unique application of the Lean principles to the sometimes unpredictable nature of car and locomotive repairs. At the most basic level, Lean thinking can be separated into two broad categories. One category is about people and one about processes. While there are a number of nuggets to learn about Lean, any Lean program is destined to stall unless serious consideration is given to the people side of the Lean success formula.
Many companies have glossed over this aspect of Lean and have failed, not so much in their initial gains, but in their ability to sustain the gains. The cornerstone of the people side of Lean is respect for people. Other highlights include consensus decision-making and developing employee engagement through increased trust and sharing of goals. In the end, successfully implementing a true Lean process takes far more of a cultural change than just putting concepts into action. One of the great things about our situation is we're coming off a three-year behavioral-based leadership initiative, which is the ideal foundation for managing our workforce effectively. While there are a number of nuggets to learn about Lean, NS shops do not have the luxury of taking the standard manufacturing-type concepts to the assembly line.
The fact of the matter is, we live in a world where there's constant variance, many different vehicles, many different problems with the vehicles. So where do we begin? We begin by teaching the seven wastes, and those wastes are waiting, overproduction, excess inventory, unnecessary transport, unnecessary movement, which usually refers to people, employees, overprocessing, and defects. Suffice it to say, our Insight process is focused on reducing waste. We're gonna talk more about these concepts in our shop tour later this afternoon. And while there are many aspects to a successful Lean program, I'm just gonna touch on five, and those are 5S , which stands for sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain, level the load, standardize the work, reduce setup time, and visual management.
Again, we're gonna talk a little bit more about this on the tour, but for now, let's dive deeper into just one of these topics, level the load. Starting in 2013, we made a very conscious effort to stabilize the flow of cars for the repair tracks. These are cars that have been identified as having a defect in the train yard that needs to be remedied before the train can depart. And through efforts with our transportation department, we created predictable switching and even the sorting of cars in advance of the time that they go on the repair track. And as a result, we're able to adjust our headcount of car repair forces to the median, not the peak. Another aspect of leveling the load is also balancing the workforce. It's easy to let a workforce in a seven-day-a-week operation gravitate towards Saturday, Sunday off.
But the fact is, when that occurs, it creates peak in the demand for our services. To show you what leveling a load can mean in terms of productivity, here's a graph of car maintenance personnel over the last two years, and you can see there's been steady improvement. Not only that, but if you look at the red line across the top, this has actually occurred during a time of increased traffic. Another benefit of this leveling the load exercise focused on car maintenance, has been that we've actually achieved the lowest bad order ratio in recent history. We're down to about 3% of our freight cars for merchandise traffic being out of service for maintenance.
At the same time, we actually increased the level of repairs we were performing and reaped the benefit of the increased velocity of these cars moving across the shop tracks that yielded a $1.5 million reduction in car hire for private and foreign railroad cars. So in the end, as we look to have the people side of Lean converge with a constant focus on process improvements. We hope to create an environment that is one of problem-solving, an environment that reaches down to the all levels of the NS organization and brings the employees into the problem-solving circle. In the final analysis, no one knows the work better than the employees, and Insight is directed, it's focused on engaging the employees in the workplace. And in fact, Toyota summed this up to saying that, indeed, there's an eighth waste, the unused creativity of employees.
In closing, we're focused on two major process improvement initiatives, Engage, which is focused on terminals, and Insight, which is focused on car and locomotive shop activity. Thank you very much.
I think what we'll do at this point is take a 10-minute bio break and then meet back in here as quickly and efficiently as we can. Or do you want to just, are we good to jump into Q&A?
Why don't we do the bio break?
Sounds good. So a 10-minute bio break, in and out as quick as we can, and then Wick will wrap up, and we'll break out into our tour groups.
If I could ask everyone to take their seats. Thanks. Well, we are about to wrap up this portion of the presentation. I think Katie tells me that we could, if you have any specific questions about what you've seen here, we've got time for maybe one or two quick questions. Does everybody understand how a hump yard works now? Right. Anything? Any questions at all? Well, we'll set off on the tour here shortly, and once we're done with that, the buses will head on back, hopefully with you and your bags together. Let me try to wrap it up very briefly then. First of all, again, thanks for coming, and sharing the day with us. We know that you all have very busy schedules. Hopefully, you found this to be worthwhile.
I know that we have some great presenters who have really done, I think, an outstanding job of showing you how the railroad works and how we think about everything that we do, and how we plan to grow in the future and handle that growth. I think as we depart, though, I think we've accomplished my other goal, which I talked about some last night, which is really just showcasing the great team at Norfolk Southern. At the end of the day, a railroad or any company is all about the people, a nd I have believed, I have always believed that we have the best people in the railroad business, and hopefully, you saw today what our capabilities are and how good all the NS team are at doing the job and delivering our customers' freight in the way that we need to.
So having said that, enjoy the tour. If you've got any positive feedback on the tour, my email address is wick.moorman. If you've got suggestions or amendments, it's katie-dot. Yeah, never mind. Yeah. No. Let me close by saying that a lot of people worked very hard to put this together. Mark mentioned our operating team, who not only got this together for all of you, but as some of you knew, know, we did this for our board last week, so they're more than ready to see senior management leave. But let me also really thank Katie and all of Marta's team, Cheryl and Becky, who you saw over there, and everyone else who helped put this together. You all have done a great job, and it's much appreciated by all of us. And let's give them a brief round of applause.
Thank you. And having said that, if there are no further questions, let's go look at a hump yard.