Trinium TMS

CW Trinium is an intermodal Transportation Management System (TMS) inside the CargoWise ecosystem, used by drayage and trucking companies to run the daily movement of shipping containers between ports, rail terminals, container yards, and warehouses. It sits at the operational heart of intermodal freight: dispatchers, operations managers, and drivers rely on it as their central command system for container dispatching, driver assignments, order logistics, and real-time fleet operations. The domain it serves is high-volume, time-sensitive, and regulation-heavy, where operational efficiency directly affects profitability.

Trinium was originally a legacy desktop application, built on older technology and workflows that were not designed for modern web-based usage. This project focused on transitioning it into a scalable, web-based TMS: redesigning legacy modules into web-friendly workflows, improving usability, and adding capabilities the legacy system never had. The work was structured as a module-by-module conversion driven by business requirements, rather than a single big-bang rewrite.

The legacy Trinium system carried compounding operational and usability challenges that made an already demanding job harder for the people running freight operations:

The approach was to transition Trinium from a legacy desktop TMS into a modern, scalable web platform built on MUI (Material UI) as the foundational design system, converting the product module by module against business requirements. Rather than replicate legacy patterns on the web, each module was reworked for improved usability and structure, and several were extended with capabilities the legacy system did not have.

I first established the overall UI direction for the web platform. Once that was discussed and approved, I moved through the modules in turn. Order Management was completely redesigned around a table-based order list with efficient row actions (Edit, Delete, Duplicate, Mass Update, Add Order), a modal-based Quick Add using progressive accordion sections for fast entry, and a full-page order creation screen with side-panel tab navigation across Order, Schedule, Container, and Chassis, supporting Pickup, Hook, and Delivery legs for complex orders. On top of the redesigns, new capabilities addressed the legacy gaps directly: a Mass Update feature for editing many orders at once, an AI-powered natural language dispatch planning interface, a consolidated Communication Centre, and map-based visual dispatching. A wide set of additional modules were redesigned to complete the platform, from Street Turn Criteria, Rail Billing, AR/AP, and Driver Itinerary and HOS to a Customer Portal, document upload and transfer, a customizable dashboard with configurable widgets, and a modernized sidebar, navigation, and menu system with AI chat integration.

Modernizing a legacy operational system is really about workflows, not screens. The most valuable work was not making Trinium look current, it was reworking how dispatchers actually move through orders, assignments, and communication. Converting module by module against business requirements, and analyzing the legacy pain points inside each one before redesigning, kept the effort anchored to operational reality instead of surface polish, which matters most in a high-volume, time-sensitive domain where every extra step has a cost.

Introducing AI into an operational tool works best when it speaks the operator's language and keeps them in control. Framing dispatch planning as a natural language interface met dispatchers where they already are, but the design still had to expose the plan clearly and let them review, approve, reassign, and resolve conflicts at the leg level. The lesson was that automation earns trust in this kind of system by being legible and reversible, not by being fully hands-off.