“Big ideas” are key to driving Union Pacific’s vision of Safety + Service & Operational Excellence – something the railroad’s Tech team has never shied away from.
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During its second-annual ‘Hackathon’ event hosted by the Tech Department, cross-functional team members leveraged creativity and innovation to tackle real-world challenges. Employees focused energy on driving improvements in critical areas like operational efficiency, customer service and field communications.
After four weeks of ideation and five weeks of building prototypes, seven finalists were chosen to present their projects to an executive panel. The 2023 winning team included Tech’s Josh Saltz, senior systems engineer; Kaleb Koehn, associate systems engineer; and Sabir Shakeel, senior systems engineer; and Fran Haferkamp, senior manager, Customer Care and Support.
From left, Kim Hess, assistant vice president-Energy, Marketing and Sales; Ashok Fichadia, assistant vice president-Customer, Tech; Kaleb Koehn; Josh Saltz; and Rick Lichtas, assistant vice president-Network Integration and Scheduling, Network Planning and Operations.
Using a customer-centric approach, the team’s innovative project makes customer trace data available to the customer through UP’s cloud platform. The idea enables deeper supply chain integration, as well as access to Artificial Intelligence and data visualization capabilities.
“Our team collaborated with business and technology partners to prove our idea works and has significant business value,” Saltz said.
All final-stage ideas will be pursued and prioritized for further evaluation and execution.
“The hackathon has been an incredible opportunity for me to explore beyond my current projects,” Koehn said. “I get to contribute fresh ideas that will have a positive impact on UP and our customers.”
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