WESTbahn Management Gmbh Rail Workforce Management

Timetable, block and duty planning, employee and vehicle assignment and automatic wage calculation solution.

• • Kilometres per year: 2.7 million
  • Number of trains: 7 train sets
  • Employees: 200
  • Task: Rail passenger operations in Austria
  • Trapeze Product: Trapeze Rail System for timetable, block and duty planning, employee and vehicle allocation as well as automatic wage calculation

The organisation

WESTbahn Management GmbH is an Austrian rail company that was founded as a result of the European railway deregulation. In December 2011, the company commenced hourly intercity rail passenger operations between Vienna and Salzburg. WESTbahn has been using Trapeze Rail System since operations began.

The challenge

In order to begin rail operations in December 2011, WESTbahn required a software solution capable of handling timetable, block and duty planning as well as the allocation of vehicles and employees. Furthermore, it had to function as the central IT system for all installed IT solutions.

The solution

WESTbahn drew up a detailed product requirements document and obtained tenders from 12 software suppliers. All solutions were fundamentally able to deliver what WESTbahn wanted, but several elements were better in Trapeze’s Rail System and in particular the employee allocation was considered substantially superior. Furthermore, the ability to have all essential functions controlled via a single system was an appealing prospect. Financially, Trapeze Rail System also proved to be a favourable choice.

Implementation

Trapeze has successfully performed the entire technical implementation and three WESTbahn employees have been trained as super users to enable them to train other employees. “The training was well organised and of very high quality. It was a very individual training specific for us at WESTbahn. Therefore it has been easy for us to pass on our knowledge to the other users”, says Thomas Daxer, Team Leader of Drivers and Production of WESTbahn.

Integration

As the central IT system, Trapeze Rail System is connected to a range of other systems. It interfaces with the ticketing system, asset management and data warehouse. The latter is also part of the delivered Trapeze solution and enables an easy and reliable compilation of data for analyses and reports.

Current use

Today, WESTbahn uses Trapeze Rail System for timetable, block and duty planning, the short-term and long-term allocation of employees and vehicles as well as automatic wage calculation. In total, five employees work full time on the system: a planner, two dispatchers and two employees in HR. Trapeze Rail System contains all the necessary elements for an efficient work day; and is used to manage 200 employees, including train crew, drivers and administrative employees. According to the employees, the greatest advantage is that all tasks can be carried out within a single system. The daily work processes is now streamlined and less restrictive which makes the work much more productive and efficient. “One of the great advantages of the system is its data management. You simply feed the system with data once and it can then be found throughout the system”, CIO Christian Pettauer explains.

All parts of the system provide the desired functionality: Timetables and blocks are flexible and easy to change; dispatchers can instantly see which employees are available and can replace as required. With more than 100 employees working on the trains at any given time, a more efficient employee allocation has resulted in a better service for passengers. Other highly appreciated solutions are the NOVUS Crew Web for optimised internal communication, duty information and sign-on and sign-off functionality as well as the web based CMS solution that has been jointly developed by Trapeze and WESTbahn. The latter enables dispatch of lists with specific job tasks to the individual employee – as well as the monitoring of the performance of these tasks. “Both Web CMS and the NOVUS Crew Web are seen as highly innovative and modern solutions”, explains Thomas Daxer, Team Leader of Drivers and Production.

Conclusion

The successful implementation and subsequent operations have been facilitated by the close cooperation between Trapeze and WESTbahn. “We have very high demands which naturally require available resources. However, we have always met our common goals”, Thomas Daxer says. Throughout the entire process, WESTbahn has been committed and contributed with many suggestions for improvement of the Trapeze Rail System. At Trapeze this is highly appreciated since practical operating experience contributes to the completion of successful projects and the development of lasting and efficient solutions.

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