“Innovation is something difficult, as, in general, you have to destroy something and replace it with an innovative approach. Practically, innovation means engage in creative destruction, and the digitalisation can answer to freight transport challenges. Implementing digital solutions will improve productivity, will optimize the maintenance and will increase the customer benefits,” Gilles Peterhans, Secretary General of UIP said, during the Railway PRO Technology and Services Forum, organised by Club Feroviar and Railway PRO, with the support of the Romanian Railway Industry Association in April.
The digital transformation involves some phases that include collaboration, as in a fragmented industry, internal and external collaboration shall be adapted to digital transformation; digital infrastructure and digital assets that ensure compatibility of solutions to create conditions for new collaborations and business offers; business processes – develop new but common processes, existing processes are digitized and automated; intelligent systems – connection with the Internet makes objects intelligent (Internet of Things) and sharing data, information and knowledge will deliver benefits.
Improving the productivity means real time fleet management, real time shock detection, reduce turnover time, reduce manual work and better forecast of fleet utilization.
Optimising the maintenance will help in developing preventive maintenance scheme, will offer a higher reliability, will improve processes at workshops and will reduce maintenance costs.
Increase customer benefits will be reflected by developing new services based on real time tracking and tracing and in monitoring goods in real time.
According to UIP presentation, a step from analog to digital involves the “concentration on solutions not on the barriers”.
Usual barriers in rail business and possible responses
– The European market for new rail freight wagons is small and volatile and it needs to differentiate between asset investments and investments in telematics;
– Innovations must not restrict interoperability that put pressure on telematic suppliers – to develop standardised interfaces;
– Basic innovation requirements are not sufficiently defined and the implementation is too slow and to that end, the companies must learn from best practices in order to adapt the existing solutions/mature technologies;
– Innovations must generate economic gains. Economic benefits and costs are not necessarily reaped by the same entities. It is need to concentrate on the simple use cases with high customer benefits.
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