Staying awake with workforce management

By Stewart Hill, Director of Corporate Marketing

According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), one of the ongoing safety challenges in running a safe and efficient railroad is fighting the fatigue of the railroad engineers and all other members of the train crew and train dispatchers. Putting this another way, it is in the primary interests of all the railroads' stakeholders, whether passengers or not, that the railway engineers stay awake while in control of their locomotive. The consequences otherwise can be disastrous with the industry also receiving much unwanted and negative publicity across all forms of media.

In the AAR's June 2010 report titled "Fighting Fatigue in the Rail Industry" [1] which is the inspiration behind this article, it is clearly outlined that railroads have a better safety record than many other industries [2] including mining, agriculture, trucking, and even grocery stores, and that rail and accident injury rates have improved significantly over the past thirty years.  The strict restrictions placed on train crews' working hours by the Hours of Service Act (HSA) regarding on-duty, off-duty, and limbo times contributes to this performance by helping to reduce fatigue however, unlike a locomotive, employee and passenger safety is a journey and it does not have a destination. The pursuit of improved safety is relentless therefore railroads "...are pursuing a variety of scientifically-based fatigue countermeasures..." [1, p3] to continue to improve the safety performance of the rail industry.  Such countermeasures include [1, p3]: increasing the minimum number of off-duty hours; allowing employees to request extra rest periods; and a variety of other initiatives that are appropriate for a particular railroad.

This article outlines how workforce management and optimization software, which has many years of success in improving the efficiencies of individual people and crews across multiple industries, can also play a vital role in the pursuit of minimizing train crew fatigue.

Shift Planning

As passenger trains have regular and published timetables, many rail employees will work routine schedules that are reliable and communicated ahead of time.  Just like many commercial businesses however, the demand placed on railroads is influenced by numerous external factors such as the time of year, the weather, events, harvests, pricing, and many other variables.  Some railroad employees are therefore working an increasing number of flexible shifts that will change in response to the demand that is being placed on the railroad.  While flexible working is a positive means for accommodating such variability, it is somewhat at odds with the goal of improving safety through reducing employee fatigue because it is not necessarily clear ahead of time that such demand will occur on a given day and that employee flexibility is required.  Here, the variability and associated complexity is further increased when you incorporate the restrictions of the HSA and the employees' preferences concerning their availability and preferred working times.

This is the point where advanced shift planning and optimization solutions enter the fray by automatically building the best profile of shifts to accommodate the demand that is being placed on the railroad.  Human interaction is limited with this being a fast computerized, scientific, and intelligent set of processes.

The aim of this approach is not just to plan flexible and variable shift patterns but to also simultaneously consider the full context with the external factors and employee needs and preferences. Optimized shift planning requires that railroads must make the greatest effort possible to calculate the demand forecast accurately so that employee schedules and shift patterns are accurate and focus on the goal of reducing fatigue.  The outcome from optimized shift planning is to have the right levels of railroad staffing: that is having the right numbers of employees, in the right places, at the right times but without contravening the HSA's rules.

As the environment is unpredictable, railroads can build a clearer outlook by running simulations that create potential shift patterns based on anticipated demand across various scenarios. For example, the shift patterns for next week may take a different shape should the local football team make the playoffs so optimized shift planning provides the ability to plan ahead and prepare for such possibilities by factoring in increases in both passenger and freight trains.

Productivity

Shift planning ensures that the railroad has sufficient coverage to keep railroad employees alert and fresh but there is an additional step that drives extra productivity from the railroad - the in-day scheduling of activities.  By also assigning the railroad employees to specific roles, railroads can ensure that they have the right people employed in the right roles throughout their shifts minimizing potential overtime payments or staff shortages.  By intelligently deciding "who, does what, when, where, and for whom" it is possible to complete more work using the same number of employees.  This does not just apply to train crews and dispatchers, but to every role in the railroad organization.

Conclusion

With safety being of paramount importance to railroads, optimized shift planning and scheduling is another of the scientifically-based countermeasures that should be explored by railroads.  This is not some random or subjective approach, instead it is based on clever algorithms that are tried and tested in many industries throughout the world which are designed to operate a railroad in the most efficient and safe manner possible.  It is the way of the future.

All the shift planning and scheduling references made in this article are delivered by solutions from ClickSoftware.  This encompasses manual, automated, and optimized shift planning, shift scheduling, and rostering, plus appropriate forecasting and simulation tools.  These are solutions that encompass every aspect of the workforce, regardless of role, location, and function, meaning that train crews and dispatchers are equally accommodated.  This is a true enterprise-wide approach to workforce management and service optimization. 

Take Action

To further understand how the approach behind optimized shift planning and the benefits that it provides to railroads, download and read the ClickSoftware white paper "Optimized Shift Planning - The Way of the Future".

Sources

[1] http://www.aar.org/incongress/~/media/aar/backgroundpapers/fightingfatigueintherailindustry.ashx

[2] US Bureau of Labor Statistics cited within [1]