IT for Rail Management Conference: Railways Are Changing

The international management conference IT for Rail was held for the third time on June 26 and 27. Around 30 top managers from several European railway operators accepted the joint invitation from DB Regio and IVU Traffic Technologies to come to Berlin to discuss the digital transformation of railways, current challenges and future developments.

After the event was kicked off by Dr Frank Scholz, CIO of DB Regio, and Perry Prust, head of the public transport planning division at IVU, the attendees launched the discussion with reports from day-to-day business. Danilo Gismondi, CIO of Trenitalia, for example, gave the exclusive group a candid insight into the handling of business-critical systems at the Italian state railway. Subsequently, Oliver Bratton, European operations Director at MTR, reported about challenges in the UK Railway Market and the role played by planning systems for efficient operations. Academic talks by Prof. Manfred Boltze from TU Darmstadt and Prof. Ralf Borndörfer from Freie Universität Berlin supplemented the speakers’ field reports with key theoretical ideas.

Digitalization was a particularly important issue. In DB Regio’s mobile testing laboratory, the managers from all over Europe were able to get an idea of the opportunities offered by the “connected train” of the future. Set up like a regional train, the bus contains numerous technical experiments to test their feasibility, including Wi-Fi, digital passenger counting and online luggage tracking. In his lecture, Dr Scholz emphasised the importance of IT and digital solutions for improving the service for passengers and developing new business models.

“We were delighted to welcome so many high-calibre guests at IT for Rail again,” said Martin Müller-Elschner, CEO of IVU Traffic Technologies. “Digitalisation is the major issue of our time – the numerous lectures and high-level discussions showed that the right IT systems are crucial for overcoming the current challenges and using the opportunities of the digital transformation.”