At the RailTrends 2024 conference in New York City on November 14, Chief Operating Officer, John Orr, highlighted how Norfolk Southern’s dedicated workforce is powering a new era of operational excellence, resilience, and growth. RailTrends, a premier industry event, gathers top executives, suppliers, customers, and key public and private stakeholders to discuss and shape the future of rail.

Orr highlighted several recent successes that exemplify NS’s forward momentum, including:

Everything we do starts with safety as a core value

My first minutes on the job were spent enacting a network-wide safety blitz to ensure our team’s focus and vigilance during this leadership change. Safety, I believe, is the bedrock of a world-class rail operation and it will always remain central to our strategy at NS.

We’re delivering connectivity for our customers through our terminal rich railway

Early on, we identified two critical terminals as anchor points to begin our network improvement, one in the Northern part of our network and the other in the South. A team was sent to each of these yards to work closely with local leadership, to provide a fresh set of eyes, and to work together to drive process improvement. Using a collaborative approach, improvement opportunities were identified and put into place.

Our war rooms deliver impactful results

We had a problem with too many unscheduled train stops. A mechanical war room was established to drill down on each stop, whether locomotive or car-related, identifying the root cause, and fixing problems at the source. As a result, train stops decreased by 18% in a matter of weeks.

We’re developing our leaders and fostering a Speak Up culture where everyone is heard

Our top 300 Operations leaders have completed the first round of a multi-year curriculum focused on building trust and driving performance. Over the next three months, we will train an additional 500 frontline officers through Safety Camp II and conduct virtual Safety Energizer sessions for all 1,800 operating officers. We are embracing and living a Speak Up culture, for safety, and also to ensure people feel empowered to speak up when they see opportunities to better our organization. 

Operational excellence is creating opportunity

I’m energized by the performance we’ve demonstrated so far, and I’m even more excited about the opportunity that lies ahead. The entire organization is aligned, and we are driving improvement in each of these components. Our speak-up culture, safety summits, process rigor, and discipline have been critical drivers of our early success and are foundational to progress in achieving our future targets.

Our people differentiate NS in the industry to support our customers

We agree that people are the energy of this organization and the differentiator of our reliable service. We will continue to develop the organization and our capabilities to allow NS to unleash the full value of this network and create a really competitive product for our customers’ needs. We’re hungry for more of their business, and we’re only getting started.