Strategy Consulting
Consulting for the Rail Industry: How to Make the Mobility Transition a Success
The rail industry is seeing full order books, and the demand for rolling stock, infrastructure, and repair services has risen exponentially in recent times. Yet, with this growth comes challenges. Employees need to be more productive, factories better utilized, and processes more efficiently. At the same time, manufacturers and operators of rolling stock and infrastructure are facing a shortage of skilled workers. To achieve their goals despite this, businesses need to leverage the hidden potential within their organizations.
What challenges does the rail industry need to overcome?
For the rail industry, the mobility transition first, and foremost, means more business. However, the challenge is that the increasing volume of work involved in producing, maintaining, and repairing rolling stock and rail infrastructure often must be managed with the same level of resources. This puts added pressure on employees and can result in inefficiencies and significant financial losses for rail manufacturers and operators.
Society as a whole is also affected by this situation. If the expansion of passenger and freight rail transportation comes to a standstill, efforts to combat the impacts of climate change will also be hindered.
How can the rail industry continue to grow without significantly increasing staff? And how can it ensure a successful mobility transition?
Optimizing processes and boosting productivity in a special industry
Put simply, the rail industry can achieve this by organizing day-to-day business processes efficiently, thereby increasing productivity. There are numerous approaches to accomplishing this. The consultants at Ingenics Consulting understand firsthand the challenges that must be overcome. They also recognize that companies in the rail sector must be approached individually, as they operate differently from businesses in other industries.
This means there are four key areas of action for businesses in the rail transportation industry:
1. Raise employee satisfaction and capacity utilization
In the rail industry in particular, the work times can tend to be unappealing. Production runs on a shift basis, and maintenance and repairs are ideally performed whenever the timetables allow for it, at night or on the weekends. If skilled workers are dissatisfied with their schedules, they may be absent more frequently or even consider resigning, creating further challenges for rail operators.
One effective way to boost both employee satisfaction and productivity is to involve staff in the creation of work schedules.
Ingenics Consulting helps businesses with this process, from surveying employees to developing and implementing optimized work schedules. This approach—not only the carefully designed schedules themselves—also provides an opportunity to enhance a company’s competitiveness in the labor market. Additionally, shifts can be planned more efficiently, and employee capacity can be utilized to its fullest, resulting in increased productivity.
2. Use data and digital technologies optimally
It is now common knowledge that digital transformation is essential if companies want to stay futureproof. Similarly, most people these days know that digital procedures are usually more efficient and less susceptible to errors and make it easier to comply with regulations.
However, even when digital foundations are already in place and systems have been implemented, data and services are often not used to their full potential. Ingenics Consulting advises clients on which digital solutions truly add value and how their business can benefit from them.
Furthermore, the experts at Ingenics Consulting develop tailored implementation strategies for digital transformation, along with the right user-friendly software for deployment in the rail sector. In a maintenance and repair environment, for example, low-code or no-code solutions can eliminate shadow systems and help optimize processes quickly and effectively.
Digital technologies will never replace humans; however, they can accelerate processes and free up time for employees to focus on the most important tasks. For operators and manufacturers in the rail industry, this creates an opportunity to handle increasing order volumes even amid a shortage of skilled workers.
3. Optimize processes and make them lean
To save time, money, and effort, work processes should operate as efficiently as possible. This becomes even more crucial when new workloads must be handled by existing staff. The priority, therefore, is to unlock additional potential through lean management, process optimization, and increasing plant efficiency. Beyond core management processes, this also includes the availability and supply of materials in logistics operations, as well as the planning and management of resources such as plants, fleets, and infrastructure.
The consultants at Ingenics Consulting leverage their expertise in process and organizational consulting, and industrial engineering to help buinesses establish seamless workflows. They focus on achieving optimal outcomes for each specific industry and client, from the big picture down to individual SOPs. For example, they assess performance, analyze processes, develop new concepts, standards, and targets, and support implementation, whether at the C-suite level or on the shop floor.
4. Specifically for operators and service companies: significantly reduce workshop time.
To ensure safety, operators must perform regular maintenance and repairs on their trains. One way to significantly reduce time spent in the workshop is to optimize work preparations, for example, by implementing “time components.” With time components, certain intrinsically linked activities are grouped together and contracted as a package based on estimated or actual effort. This streamlines planning and eliminates redundancy.
The consultants at Ingenics Consulting create these time components using their industry expertise and optimize the plans in close consultation with clients, while carefully considering the specific sequence in which tasks must be completed. As a result, the overall process becomes significantly more efficient.
When combined with overall process optimization, the effective use of digital technologies, and improved employee satisfaction, workshop time can be reduced by up to 40 percent. This, in turn, increases overall capacity and productivity.
How does Ingenics Consulting support businesses in the rail industry?
Consulting for the rail industry: By applying a clear view, individual road maps, industry knowledge, and expertise, Ingenics Consulting helps the rail sector to put the mobility transition into practice while also becoming more efficient and productive.
We support our rail clients across all challenges they face. Our consultants create clarity where it is needed, develop practical solutions, apply proven approaches, and design customized implementations of road maps. The focus, however, always remains on each company’s specific challenges.
Beyond industry-specific strategy and organizational consulting, we support businesses with our full range of services. For example, assisting manufacturers with factory planning or infrastructure operators with project management.
In addition, we advise businesses in the rail transportation industry on operations transformation across three action areas: “lean,” “green,” and “digital.” Our goal is to enable precise, zero-waste operations that unlock maximum efficiency. This approach delivers not only financial benefits but also environmental advantages, particularly in the rail sector, where increased efficiency and productivity directly support climate-friendly mobility. The result is fewer traffic jams, cleaner air, and reduced noise for everyone.
