Context
To create a new international (high speed train) railway company, a joint venture was made between two long-standing national railway operators. This entailed the set-up of all functions and capabilities required by European regulations and by customer- and shareholders’ expectations. One of those functions was the development of MRO capabilities that can guarantee train comfort, -safety, -availability and -reliability. To this end, a long-term outsourcing construction was concluded between the new railway company (the customer) and an existing high-speed-train maintenance facility of one of its parent operators: this facility would be fully dedicated to the customer….. on a few conditions.
Our Mission
The 10-year commitment to allocate maintenance work volumes to the facility and to cover all its costs, came with a –contractually agreed- obligation to improve its operations: re-structuring at the facility was needed to significantly improve maintenance lead times, service quality (punctuality, reliability) and productivity. We were asked to develop and implement the program to make this possible.
Results
- 15% productivity improvement
- Transparency and integration of maintenance operations into the railway operations of the customer
- Increase from 45% to 85% in meeting train availability target
Approach
- Developed close collaboration with the customer to ensure alignment on expectations and priorities, resulting in a transformation plan that outlined:
- FTE- and skills requirements for every function in the organisation, based on expected work volumes and -complexity
- The migration plan to get to the new structure and size
- The required change projects (and their dependencies) to enable the transformation
- Implemented a wide range of process- and organisational changes:
- Reorganised maintenance work to better meet customer demand patterns: multiskilled teams, new shift structure and –timings
- Improved planning and coordination processes and –organisation
- Spare parts replenishment to reduce critical stock-outs
- ERP implementation to improve integration across all functions
- Leadership development, structured communication and performance management
- Skills development planning
- Strengthened quality- and safety management
Main challenges
- Overcoming trust issues between the two parties, collaboration
- Required mindset change: from working for another department to serving a real external customer
- Many constraints imposed by the unions and internal policies
- Maintaining focus on priorities and on committed project timings
