customer spotlight

Harrah’s Entertainment
Cashing in on loyalty
Harrah’s success in the gaming industry is partly due to the company’s practice of rewarding its customers for continued patronage. To better serve its Total Rewards cardholders, Harrah’s Enter tainment Inc. (www.harrahs.com) has begun using the ILOG JRules-driven Enterprise Promotions (EP) application.

With EP, Harrah’s is the first gaming company to automate a national customer reward program. The application lets Harrah’s enter the conditions for a promotion and the profile characteristics of the customers who qualify for the promotion. EP automatically offers the promotion to qualifying customers, and the promotion can apply to all, some or just one of Harrah’s 26 casinos.

ILOG JRules processes Total Rewards customer data, matching promotions to specific times, demographics and qualifications in order to get the best customer response. The application has raised the bar for customerloyalty programs by helping Harrah’s offer unmatched incentives and upgraded sweepstake possibilities.

ILOG Professional Services contributed by working with the project’s system integrator and ensuring ILOG JRules’ newest features were adequately leveraged in addressing Harrah’s requirements.

Metro de Madrid
Better service for all
Metro de Madrid (www.metromadrid.es), the metropolitan railway of Madrid, Spain, has greatly improved its employees’ satisfaction and its service to 550 million passengers annually by using ILOG optimization and visualization software in critical scheduling and supervision operations.

“The flexibility and real-time performance of ILOG software bring significant efficiency improvements to Metro de Madrid operations by giving us the capability to react more quickly to changes,” says Fernando Gómez, manager of the Information Technology Center of Metro de Madrid.

With ILOG Solver and ILOG Views, Metro de Madrid has optimized two core operations. ILOG Solver enables the subway to schedule staff by fully taking into account important operational constraints. Huge efficiency gains have resulted from using a scheduler able to simultaneously address labor regulations and employee work preferences.

An ILOG Views-based depot and line management system has become a central part of the subway’s IT operations. Its real-time display of operational data allows railway personnel to plan faster, provide more accurate information on train traffic, and immediately address unexpected events such as equipment failures.

ILOG Professional Services developed the depot and line management system over the past four years, allowing Metro de Madrid to take advantage of ILOG’s unique project management expertise in the domain of real-time supervision.

SNCF
Visualizing fastest trains
Operating some of the world’s fastest trains has led SNCF (www.sncf.com) to rely on leading ILOG Views visualization technology to more accurately monitor rail operations. SNCF’s TGV trains operate at an average speed of 300 kph (186 mph) and cover a rail network over 750 kilometers (470 miles) long. Ensuring the safe, on-time service of these trains takes close, real-time supervision. For this, SNCF uses ILOG Views in the Coordination Opérationnelle de Ligne TGV (COLT) train supervision system. It accurately displays the location and operating status of every TGV train in operation.

“The use of ILOG Views enabled us to create true representations of train l o c a t i o n and activity that are a complete departure from those previously used by SNCF,” says Paul Jam, COLT project manager at SNCF.

At the start of the project, ILOG Professional Services (IPS) put SNCF’s development team on the right track, with the IPS Advanced Jumpstart program. The service formalizes a project’s requirements, establishes a design framework and delivers a working prototype of the target application.

With 182,000 employees, and more than 325 million passengers in 2002, SNCF is one of the largest railroad companies in the world. Its services include the Eurostar link between Paris and London, urban and rural passenger operations, and freight and parcel shipping. SNCF has relied on ILOG software for more than 13 years, and today uses ILOG’s entire line of products -- business rules, optimization and visualization – in monitoring resources, scheduling trains and creating contracts for shipping orders. ILOG solutions help SNCF employees be more efficient and productive in running the railroad company’s vast operations.

DFS
Keeping skies safe

Realistic training is essential for preparing air traffic controllers to keep the skyways safe. DFS Deustsche Flugsicherung GmbH. (www.dfs.de), which directs both civil and regional military air traffic over Germany, will soon start training its controllers with a new radar simulator built with ILOG Views.

The NEWSIM simulator uses the high performance and accuracy of ILOG Views to create realistic images that completely capture the controller experience. Users will experience the real thing without real planes. DFS selected ILOG Views for more than its great graphics and performance. The visualization component’s incredible scalability enables NEWSIM to handle more than 800 targets without coming close to its maximum threshold.

DFS offers its customers safe, high-quality air navigation services with a competitive cost-benefit ratio. By integrating civil and military air traffic control, DFS is able to efficiently allocate airspace to satisfy the interests of its customers.

"We’re absolutely satisfied with ILOG Views’ stability and performance. NEWSIM is by far the most realistic simulator we’ve built and used to date. Our controllers are among the best trained in the industry." Gerhard Tauss Head of Simulator Development DFS

Praxair/Wipro Infotech
Filling tanks at less cost
The challenge of keeping customers’ onsite tanks filled at the lowest possible cost has led Praxair India (www.praxair.com) to adopt Wipro Infotech’s Logistics Management System (LMS), a new ILOG optimizationdriven solution for scheduling gas deliveries.

Wipro (www.wipro.co.in) created LMS with ILOG Solver and ILOG Dispatcher. It replaces Praxair’s manual, order-based inventory management system with an automated vendor-managed inventory system that optimizes critical scheduling and forecasting processes.

In addition to scheduling, LMS automates and increases the accuracy of demand forecasting for Praxair’s 250 large institutional customers. The solution offers greater inventory visibility for projecting customer usage and improving resource allocation, resulting in far better service.

“A system was required that could remotely monitor storage tank levels, help forecast demand, and in turn ensure prompt supply,” says Indrajit Mooke, managing director at Praxair. “ILOG technology ensures that the cost per quantity delivered will be the lowest.”

Integrated with Praxair’s demand forecasting modules and vehicle tracking and tank telemetry systems, the new system immediately improved work processes, boosting Praxair customers’ satisfaction.

BMW
Ultimate visualization
BMW has started using a new ILOG JViews-powered visualization system to display schematics of electrical systems in vehicles. The growing functionality of BMW cars has been achieved with electronic components that have increased the complexity of electrical and communications networks. A first step for better containing this complexity is using sophisticated visualization to analyze the networks.

ILOG addressed this problem by developing a visualization solution fully customized to the customer’s needs. Using ILOG JViews and its Graph Layout technology, consultants from ILOG Professional Services built a graphical user interface for displaying schematics. Following rules defined by the customer, Graph Layout automatically generates schematics using attributes called from a database of electrical systems. ILOG R&D contributed to the project by implementing specific Graph Layout algorithms.

The visualization system has satisfied the customer with the quality of its code and graphics.