Breaking through tradition: Bolingbrook's Wi-Tronix innovates in rail industry
Bad puns aside, you could say that Larry Jordan is on the right track for success.
The company Jordan co-founded in his basement in 2005 has grown to become a driving force in the railroad industry.
Jordan is president and chief technology officer of Wi-Tronix, which makes hardware and software ranging from event recorders and video monitoring systems - a locomotive's "black box" - to fuel sensor and monitoring systems. It also makes "complementary" systems for Positive Train Control networks, which are designed to stop trains before accidents can occur.
The Bolingbrook company's equipment can be found on all Amtrak locomotives, Jordan said, as well as on major freight carriers such as BNSF and Canadian National. Wi-Tronix systems are also in place in Mexico's major rail consortium, Ferromex, and in some rail carriers in Australia.
Jordan says the rail bug got to him during a college internship at General Motors' Electro-Motive plant in LaGrange.
"I fell in love with the technology, but also the history and the opportunities in an industry that is well established," he said. "I saw how technology could be applied to a mature industry to improve things that were important, like safety, efficiency and reliability."
Jordan went on to work with the GM division as an engineer and tech manager. He said while it was part of a global company, the division had a "scrappy, entrepreneurial spirit" that he appreciated.
But in 2005, the division was going in a different direction and eventually was sold to a private equity firm. So, armed with a business plan and a Small Business Administration loan, Jordan and a partner set up Wi-Tronix. Its first product was a system that allowed rail carriers to know where a locomotive was, whether it was operating properly and whether the engine's crew was operating in a safe and efficient manner, Jordan said.
He notes that product remains the core of Wi-Tronix's portfolio and has evolved over the years to add more features and capabilities like collision, fuel economy and emissions sensors.
Wi-Tronix's latest version, Violet, which Jordan calls a "three-in-one" product, features the core system with the addition of black box and video recording capabilities.
"That's what we do a lot," he said. "We create these solutions where we put a lot of different information together to provide an end solution for our customers."
Jordan said the company is moving toward the development of more autonomous operations. He envisions future systems adapting artificial intelligence and deep learning technologies to reduce human interaction in areas such as fueling, scheduling and even locomotive operations.
"A lot of solutions are decision-support systems right now; information that is gathered to help a person make a decision," he said. "They will eventually become decision systems, where our product makes a decision, and the last step is that the product makes a decision and acts upon it."
In addition, Wi-Tronix plans to expand into the light rail market, adapting its technology from freight and passenger trains into interurban streetcar and subway systems.
The company landed an investment from global conglomerate Siemens in 2017, Jordan said, which will help in expanding into the light rail market, as well as into Europe.
Being an innovator in an industry steeped in history and tradition can be difficult, Jordan said. But he points to what Elon Musk has done in the auto industry as an example that change can happen.
"In the rail industry, because it is so steeped in tradition, there is a lot of resistance to change," Jordan said. "To see what (Musk) has been able to do in the auto industry ... there's a lot of correlation in the rail industry."