Professional Documents
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AN ARTICLE FROM
WORLD
COVER STORY
A Train of Thought —
Applying IT to Stay on Track
INSIDE
Virtualizing Desktops for Today’s Workforce
Unified Communications Yield Cost Savings
Focus on Insurance
MARCH 2010
A TRAIN OF THOUGHT:
Applying IT
on
to Stay
by Jenny Mangelsdorf
* http://tinyurl.com/y86tf2g
“The aim is to ensure that forecasted growth will be absorbed Factors such as rising energy costs, a drive to reduce environ-
by the infrastructure network,” says Hans-Joachim Lucke, mental footprints and increased road congestion point to why
Transportation and Logistics business manager for CSC in investors such as Warren Buffett are betting on a resurging rail
Germany. “Even if all planned investments in infrastructure industry and why some manufacturers already rely on this mode
take place, there will be bottlenecks in part of the networks.” of transportation. Train travel releases from three to 10 times
less CO2 than driving or flying, according to the International
We have already developed various solutions to help operators Union of Railways.
improve their processes. In 1999, CSC helped develop, and
still maintains, a train management and control system for the In Germany, many large automotive, chemical and steel
Australian Rail Track Corp.’s New South Wales network. Part manufacturers use sizable internal railway networks, some
of CSC’s work included developing an automatic intelligent of which have more than 100 kilometers in railway sidings
monitoring service, GPS Watchdog, to ensure early notification and up to 400 rail-related loading and unloading stations.
of potentially hazardous situations and provide controllers with Manufacturers such as Volkswagen have turned to solutions
the tools and information to quickly respond. based on CSC’s Rail Cargo system to help plan, control
and monitor the rail networks that support their production
CSC is also helping SNCF, the French National Railway Service, facilities and factories (see “Volkswagen Drives Efficiency With
create a mobile paperless solution to support the country’s 16,000 Rail Solution,” page 14).
train drivers (see “Modern Apps for Mobile Workers,” page 11).
For Switzerland’s Federal Railways, which operates Europe’s In the air and trucking industries, there’s already a great deal of
densest and most intensively used railway network, CSC de- visibility as to where materials are located throughout the trip.
veloped a rail dispatching system that more accurately forecasts “For the cargo side, the challenge today is creating as close to a
rail traffic and allows higher network loads (see “Swiss Federal real-time supply chain so you know where things are in as close to
Railways Gets Next-Generation Dispatching System,” page 12). real-time as possible,” says CSC’s Taylor. “Transit times will vary
between transportation modalities, as will price. However, you
Moving cargo more efficiently want operational efficiency to be as close to or equal as possible
For the freight segment of the rail industry, infrastructure between the different forms of transportation, and technology is
renewal will also help smooth the movement of goods as a great way to level that playing field.”
traffic increases. European Commission analysts expect overall
Jenny Mangelsdorf is a writer for CSC’s corporate office.
Thalys chose to offer broadband Internet access on its high- a small, multidisciplinary and very responsive team,” explains
speed trains, expecting this would fulfill a growing customer Pierre Kalfon, partner in charge of CSC’s Transportation and
demand. The only problem was, at the time, no one had devel- Travel Services division in France.
oped a system that could provide commercial Internet access
aboard high-speed trains. The team’s first task was to analyze proposals submitted by
various telecoms providers, while also fine-tuning the economic
Space Age technology model of this future service. Reflecting its focus on customer
When Thalys began their original studies for this project in 2005, satisfaction, Thalys wanted to offer free Internet access
European company 21Net — with the support of the European to “Comfort 1” (first-class) passengers and give “Comfort 2”
Space Agency — developed a prototype that demonstrated passengers the option of paying for access.
both the proposed initiative’s feasibility and the public’s high
level of interest in the service. 21Net’s solution combined Wi-Fi In September 2007, Thalys and CSC selected a telecoms
inside the train with a satellite Internet connection capable of consortium, comprising 21Net, Nokia Siemens Networks and
adapting to widely fluctuating transmission conditions, due to the Telenet, whose proposed solution involved satellites. “The
trains’ high speeds. The positive results of this early experiment satellite-based solution was not the only option to be looked
encouraged Thalys to envision a large-scale rollout. at, but it turned out to be the one most suited to our needs,”
says Gilles Viennois, CSC director for the project.
Thalys enlisted CSC to support this complex project, based on
our industry expertise in steering projects involving introduction The next crucial stage was development of an operating proto-
of new technologies. CSC worked with Thalys to determine type. The consortium responsible for technical development
requirements, identify the best technologies and providers, mobilized a team of 50 people, while the Thalys/CSC team
and assist with testing and rollout. Thalys wanted its Internet worked on several projects at the same time: defining optimal
system to be set up similarly to its concession system for other service levels, designing the access portal for users and obtaining
onboard services, where the operator is responsible for technical the necessary authorizations from rail transport regulators in
rollout and operation of the solution. each country involved.
“It was a transversal project requiring sophisticated expertise in Final adjustments were made to the prototype in January 2008,
railways and telecoms, with a strong international dimension and paving the way for full installation of the system in 26 Thalys
the need for the final solution to meet very high quality expectations trains. During this phase, customer support (consisting of a
by customers,” says Olivier Poitrenaud, CEO of Thalys International. hotline, onboard information and crew training) was tested to
ensure that it satisfied the high level of quality expected by
Satisfying demanding customers Thalys’ clientele. In April 2008, the service went live on the
The project team was deliberately kept small — three CSC Paris-Amsterdam and Paris-Cologne routes. It has since proven
consultants and three people from Thalys. “Faced with a project to be one of the most popular onboard services and today is
that still had numerous areas of uncertainty, our idea was to have available on all routes.
The rail operator, whose drivers first requested a mobile app At the end of their shifts, they have to hand write mission reports
at an innovation workshop, asked CSC to help define the project. that detail information such as realized schedules and problems
It would entail supporting — from both a business and a tech- encountered.
nology standpoint — the country’s 16,000 drivers of high-speed,
regional, public transport and freight trains. Less paper, fewer errors
With the new system, drivers can use PDAs to obtain and review
“We won this project thanks to our deep knowledge of the the information they need to prepare their trips. Through a GPS
transportation industry, as well as our expertise in reengineering and a scrolling timetable, pertinent information automatically
business processes while designing and implementing mobile scrolls on the screen as the system follows the driver’s progress.
solutions and technologies,” says Christophe Lienhard, partner During their shifts, drivers have access to pre-filled mission
with CSC’s Transportation practice in France. reports, which they can modify, if needed, and then send as
soon as they have finished their routes. This means less paper,
“We began by providing management consulting and mobility more timely information, no manual mission reports to scan,
expertise to analyze the train-driving processes — namely, mission correct and modify — and thus, fewer errors.
preparation, execution and report — as well as the associated
administrative and economic processes. Our goal was to After CSC designed and implemented the solution, SNCF
determine what a mobile solution could improve, while strictly teams integrated it with their IT environment and now operate
complying with professional and safety rules, such as train the solution. By following a pragmatic path, a step-by-step
regularity, speed limitations and avoiding service disruptions.” approach was developed to manage the project. First, an
experiment was conducted to see if users would gain benefits
With the project, SNCF wanted to improve efficiency, reduce from the new system, and to validate the scope, solutions
its environmental footprint, and increase responsiveness and and challenges involved. Then the solution was industrialized,
flexibility in the exchange of information between the company, back up plans defined, support functions implemented, and
drivers, and their management. rollout and business change management activities prepared.
After completing system testing, a pilot phase began at
For example, before departing, drivers have to print out and the end of 2009, followed by the rollout of the first version
gather documents — such as weekly and daily plans, speed limit now underway.
tables and special alerts — which they use during their trips.
A user-driven request
“The origin of the project was an idea from the train drivers,”
says Jean-Aimé Mougenot, SNCF director of the train drivers’
Human Resources department. “They imagined a tool that
would improve their work environment and were highly
involved in its definition and implementation, with more than
400 drivers participating, from the first steps to the beginning
of the rollout phase.
SBB manages the daily flow of 7,000 passenger trains and 2,000 freight trains that ride
Switzerland’s rail lines. To ensure the trains reach their destinations safely, punctually
and economically, the agency oversees 160 million track-kilometers a year — a number
they estimate will grow an additional 5.5 percent by 2014.
“With expected growth, we needed a system that could handle today and tomorrow’s
needs,” says Marcus Voelcker, CIO of Infrastructure for SBB and former head of
Project Rail Control System (RCS).
CSC provided systems and application architecture development, software and systems
integration, and installation and testing for a near-real-time dispatching solution.
Today, the new system serves more than 400 concurrent dispatchers and operators
who manage and control all rail traffic on the country’s entire railway network.
Because SBB can now more accurately forecast rail traffic, it allows
higher network loads and delivers more efficient communication
between train staff and dispatchers.
“When we began supporting Volkswagen [in 1997], employees For example, at Volkswagen’s Audi production factory in
used telephones and large data sheets to plan and control their Ingolstadt, Germany, nearly 300 users work with RANDIS.
rail operations. It was very labor intensive,” says Hans-Joachim This includes the factory’s manufacturing, distribution and
Lucke, CSC Transportation and Logistics business manager maintenance departments, which load and unload rail wagons
in Germany. “They needed an IT solution that would help plan, at different stations across the plant.
control and monitor the rail operations that supported their
production facilities and factories.” RANDIS stores all location and status information about wagons
and related cargo in a common database, with wagon locations
The manufacturer decided to start a project to create an IT visualized in a graphical track diagram. Along with informa-
system, called RANDIS, for VW’s rail logistics. Volkswagen tion about goods requirements from VW’s factories, RANDIS
awarded the project to CSC because of our deep business and also ensures the correct wagons and goods are moved by rail
logistics expertise and rail industry references. operations. Because the system provides multisite information and
a multilingual capability, a user at a production facility in Germany,
A team from CSC’s award-winning Logistics Competence Center for example, can see if his material was loaded at a production
began developing the solution based on CSC’s Rail Cargo facility in Hungary. RANDIS
industry solution, called CP BIS. In 1998, CSC delivered the first also delivers information
version of RANDIS to VW’s Wolfsburg, Germany, production about rail operations to
facility to support movement of resources. CSC has been support- VW’s own data warehouse
ing RANDIS ever since. application for statistical
and accounting tasks. With
Integrating a new solution this information, weak-
One challenge the team faced when developing the pilot solution nesses can be identified
was that RANDIS had to fully integrate with VW’s existing complex and eliminated for future
IT environment in Wolfsburg. planning.
“We expanded our CP BIS solution to be fully independent of Supporting international operations
database types, operating system environments and hardware Today, CSC has implemented and now supports RANDIS at the
types,” says Lucke. “Another challenge was that the telecom- manufacturer’s VW production facilities in Emden, Mosel, Kassel,
munications infrastructure in Eastern European countries Hannover and Salzgitter, Germany; Bratislava, Slovakia; and
was still poor. CSC built for Volkswagen one of the first Web- Pamplona, Spain; and at its Audi production facilities in Györ,
based rail applications, dedicated for use in their Slovakia and Hungary; and Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, Germany.
Hungary plants.”
Volkswagen uses the system to manage its daily runs of 100
With the pilot’s success, CSC began enhancing RANDIS for freight trains loaded with nearly 2,500 freight wagons. At the
more widespread use, adding new modules and interfaces. company’s largest factory — at headquarters in Wolfsburg — the
Because VW’s rail operations run 24x7, the automaker needed company moves about 160,000 wagons each year, to or from
the solution to be highly available. Today, RANDIS runs in loading and unloading stations. As an additional benefit, RANDIS
a failure-protected environment based on an IT-Unix/Oracle helps the manufacturer reduce energy consumption, emissions
environment in Volkswagen’s own data processing center. and waste through more efficient use of its rail infrastructure.
CSC provides 24x7 application support to ensure RANDIS’
availability. “Our work with CSC as an experienced partner in the rail segment
has ensured that rail logistics in the Volkswagen Group is supported
To help Volkswagen’s logistics team operate efficiently and efficiently by a consistent, companywide standard IT solution,” says
proactively plan its manufacturing activities, the company also Klaus Mennenga, Volkswagen Logistics Planning manager.
needed an electronic data interchange capability to interface
with shippers, third-party rail carriers and enterprise resource
planning systems. Now, via a browser-based Web application, For more information, visit www.csc.com/cpbis
(in German).
shippers get information from rail logistics operations and
deliver shipment information to rail operators.
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