Simply by not precisely guaranteeing a train’s time of arrival, railway companies can keep to their timetables, says PhD graduate Dr. Alfons Schaafsma.
Plan less and control more.
In a terrible rush, you’ve just arrived at the platform. Heart and lungs dangling on the wrong side of your windpipe, hair and clothes a total mess, but you’ve made it, just in time for the train. Unfortunately, the train hasn’t made it. This annoyance may soon belong to the past, according to Schaafsma, a 43-year-old civil engineer working at Railned, the company managing the capacity and security of Dutch railway tracks. He insists that we should no longer aim for the ‘Japanese’ model. ”The Japanese railways show that the perfect execution of a detailed, integral, but rigid plan can lead to very high performance,” Schaafsma writes in his dissertation. However, he doesn’t wholly believe the same can be achieved in Europe: ”The Japanese model requires perfect control of all production processes and a far-reaching conditioning of the productions environment (including the customers) to exclude perturbations. This does not fit in the European culture, in which the freedom and independence of the individual demands a particular amount of control space for anticipating and improvising within the system.”
Essence
Schaafsma’s is a two-part investigation. In part one he attempts to disentangle the jumble that is the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) (Netherlands Railway Co.). ”If you pull a loose end of the jumble, it’s hard to tell what will be affected. By dividing the NS in smaller systems, with their own services and internal or external customers, management becomes much more well-organised. The chances of innovation and market forces resulting in improved performances increase, as in other sectors, but not with the NS,” says Schaafsma, who worked for ten years at the NS before transferring to Railned%s innovation department.
To achieve this, Schaafsma developed the Transport Layer Model: a generic model that functionally analyzes the traffic and transport system by identifying services and markets. Schaafsma writes: ”The essence of the model is the distinction between transport services (the movement of passengers and goods) and traffic services (the movement of trains, aircraft, etc.). Transport services are supplied to the end users (passengers and shippers) on the transport market. Production of transport services requires % apart from means of transport – traffic services.” The traffic systems supply these services to the transport systems on the traffic market. Thus, a production chain, consisting of different system layers with passengers and shippers as end users, is created.
Bus stations
In the second part of his dissertation Schaafsma analyses the management of the rail traffic system. Instead of the present static (Japanese) production mode, he aims for a dynamic system with a completely different starting point: ‘plan less and control more’. ”In this approach controlled uncertainty takes the place of the (quasi) certainty of a rigid plan,” he writes.
The most striking aspect is the development of so-called time/path windows, replacing the static timetable. Schaafsma: ”The point of time, e.g., the arrival time, and place, e.g., the platform where the train will arrive, of the production of a transport service will be detailed close to the time of arrival or departure, as is currently common at airports and modern ‘dynamic’ bus stations.” Because there are more control possibilities, the production framework can be better controlled. A train which is ahead of its schedule could give way to a delayed train, resulting in improved reliability of services. So running to the station could be rewarded in future. What remains though is finding the right platform in time.
Simply by not precisely guaranteeing a train’s time of arrival, railway companies can keep to their timetables, says PhD graduate Dr. Alfons Schaafsma. Plan less and control more.
In a terrible rush, you’ve just arrived at the platform. Heart and lungs dangling on the wrong side of your windpipe, hair and clothes a total mess, but you’ve made it, just in time for the train. Unfortunately, the train hasn’t made it. This annoyance may soon belong to the past, according to Schaafsma, a 43-year-old civil engineer working at Railned, the company managing the capacity and security of Dutch railway tracks. He insists that we should no longer aim for the ‘Japanese’ model. ”The Japanese railways show that the perfect execution of a detailed, integral, but rigid plan can lead to very high performance,” Schaafsma writes in his dissertation. However, he doesn’t wholly believe the same can be achieved in Europe: ”The Japanese model requires perfect control of all production processes and a far-reaching conditioning of the productions environment (including the customers) to exclude perturbations. This does not fit in the European culture, in which the freedom and independence of the individual demands a particular amount of control space for anticipating and improvising within the system.”
Essence
Schaafsma’s is a two-part investigation. In part one he attempts to disentangle the jumble that is the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) (Netherlands Railway Co.). ”If you pull a loose end of the jumble, it’s hard to tell what will be affected. By dividing the NS in smaller systems, with their own services and internal or external customers, management becomes much more well-organised. The chances of innovation and market forces resulting in improved performances increase, as in other sectors, but not with the NS,” says Schaafsma, who worked for ten years at the NS before transferring to Railned%s innovation department.
To achieve this, Schaafsma developed the Transport Layer Model: a generic model that functionally analyzes the traffic and transport system by identifying services and markets. Schaafsma writes: ”The essence of the model is the distinction between transport services (the movement of passengers and goods) and traffic services (the movement of trains, aircraft, etc.). Transport services are supplied to the end users (passengers and shippers) on the transport market. Production of transport services requires % apart from means of transport – traffic services.” The traffic systems supply these services to the transport systems on the traffic market. Thus, a production chain, consisting of different system layers with passengers and shippers as end users, is created.
Bus stations
In the second part of his dissertation Schaafsma analyses the management of the rail traffic system. Instead of the present static (Japanese) production mode, he aims for a dynamic system with a completely different starting point: ‘plan less and control more’. ”In this approach controlled uncertainty takes the place of the (quasi) certainty of a rigid plan,” he writes.
The most striking aspect is the development of so-called time/path windows, replacing the static timetable. Schaafsma: ”The point of time, e.g., the arrival time, and place, e.g., the platform where the train will arrive, of the production of a transport service will be detailed close to the time of arrival or departure, as is currently common at airports and modern ‘dynamic’ bus stations.” Because there are more control possibilities, the production framework can be better controlled. A train which is ahead of its schedule could give way to a delayed train, resulting in improved reliability of services. So running to the station could be rewarded in future. What remains though is finding the right platform in time.
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