from feasible to profitable planning · supply chain planning & optimization 5 challenge 1:...

RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE CONTRACTORS

From feasible to profitable planningLearn how the world’s leading rail infrastructure contractors are turning planning into a profit engine

FROM FEASIBLE TO PROFITABLE


2 SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION

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FROM FEASIBLE TO PROFITABLE PLANNING


SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 3

Your plan’s main goal should be profitability. It’s not enough that it

just be feasible.

Planning rail infrastructure would be easy. If only projects would stop changing so frequently.

You have to assign resources, deploy people, and coordinate various projects and maintenance activities across multiple regions – all while coping with constant change in your operating environment.

While juggling all these activities, many infrastructure planners would be pleased if they even manage to create a plan that works. The idea that the plan should make money as well is simply too much to ask.

So, how do you make the best use of your resources? How do you shift from feasibility as your main goal to profitability?

Revealing the success of leading rail infrastructure planners

The world’s leading rail infrastructure contractors have found a way.

They are now able to optimize employee scheduling, machines and projects in multiple locations using an integrated platform with customized key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure how well they’re doing against their business goals.

Their customers are happy, and so are their employees and project managers.








For these industry leaders, planning is not a passive, reactive activity in which feasibility is the only goal.

They align every element of their planning to ensure that projects are not merely feasible, but profitable.

Like you, they face a number of challenges that can disrupt operations. In this brochure, we identify and discuss seven of the most common issues, along with the reponses of Quintiq solution.

Using Quintiq to plan your resources and projects minimizes risk and ensures smoother operations and better profitability. Let’s explore how Quintiq works to safeguard your bottom line.

These rail infrastructure contractors are planning for profit








Challenge 1: Avoiding unprofitable bidsYou’ve just received a tender to lay a new section of track. Before you can submit your bid, you need to know if you have the resources to do the job. You struggle to see how this job fits into your current capacity plan.

The Quintiq response: Evaluate bid scenarios to support your bid.

With Quintiq, you include the tender as a “precontractual” project in your existing resource planning. You analyze how well the new project will fit your capacity plan. Are key people and equipment available? You confirm you can complete the project in the time alloted. You test different scenarios for executing the new project to identify the most profitable option.

Using one planning system – that enables planning across all horizons and facilitates scenario comparison – ensures that you’ll prepare a bid that you know will be both feasible and profitable.

Challenge 2: Coping with adverse weather conditionsSnow and other extreme weather conditions tend to disrupt your operations. You monitor the weather reports closely, but you can’t predict precisely where or when problems will happen. Do you need to assign standby teams for the day? If so, how many people do you put on standby, and where? You struggle to strategically position your teams so that they can quickly solve problems.

The Quintiq response: People, projects and maintenance are managed and planned within a single system.

The system allows you to see all your available resources and projects. It supports you in deciding which employees you can assign to response teams. And it shows you the effects of a decision to take people off projects or scheduled maintenance jobs. Once the call comes in, you quickly dispatch the right people to the job.

Because you can see everything within one integrated system, you can make a decision that has minimal effects on other jobs.

Challenge 3: Identifying which measures are most cost effectiveYou have a contract to maintain a track that contains one or more weak switches. You need to decide whether it will be more cost effective to replace the weak switches and increase the maintenance interval, or monitor them more often.

The Quintiq response: Evaluate costs of different maintenance regimes.

You weigh different maintenance regimes, taking into account other works and maintenance activities to optimize your use of resources. You can see the effects on the rest of your maintenance planning and commit to a decision only after analyzing the impact on all relevant KPIs.

Easy what-if simulations help you explore profitable alternatives.








Challenge 4: Deciding between options, wondering which matches your capacityYou’ve won a contract to replace a track segment. Hiring a track-laying machine is fast but also expensive. You have employees available during the day. They could manually build sections that are then laid using much cheaper equipment. Which is the better scenario? More importantly, which scenario best fits with your capacity plan?

The Quintiq response: Evaluate multiple scenarios and compare them against capacity and KPIs.

With Quintiq, you can evaluate each scenario offline in a copy of your actual resource and project planning as if it were real. Quintiq shows you exactly how each scenario fits in the project plan and resource plan. You compare these scenarios against KPIs such as resource costs and number of shifts used. The system also alerts you if there are constraint violations in staff planning.

Scenario comparison allows you to test alternative ways of doing things, assessing the fit with your current plan and comparing the scenarios against your KPIs.

Challenge 5: Dealing with the aftermath when your plan failsAn unhappy customer calls you. A switch you repaired last week has broken. Again. The customer claims one of the welds broke. Because you were trying to create an effective plan, you didn’t allow enough time for the welders to hand over the job properly. Without crucial information about complicating factors, the welder on the shift responsible for completing the project was unable to do a proper job.

The Quintiq response: Constraint violations alert you if a planned action will break defined business rules.

Quintiq allows you to identify critical tasks and link them to a single shift. Suppose you have to split a task across shifts and employees. The system lets you know that you need to create an extra task – knowledge-sharing between the different employees. Or it lets you know if one employee can perform the whole task without violating labor rules. Similarly, you can identify key people in a project. The system will inform you if removing a certain employee from the project will cause a constraint violation.

The Quintiq software enables the management of key project activities and people – all within a single screen view. This helps to ensure your project always stays on track.

Do you know if the plans you make

match your capacity or violate business or

labor rules?

Quintiq shows you exactly how each scenario fits in the project plan and

resource plan.








Challenge 6: Machinery that’s missing when you need itYou’ve won a large, high-profile contract for a railway crossing renewal. You’ve assigned the required employees, equipment and materials to the job, but the customer changes the start date and narrows your possession time. To ensure you can finish the job, you assign more employees to the project. But at the start of the project, you get an urgent phone call. Some of the machinery needed is not available as it has been assigned to another project. You realize it’s hard to keep changing plans aligned as resources are planned in different systems.

The Quintiq response: Integrated resource planning.

Quintiq allows you to integrate the planning of your employees and equipment. The effects of changes to the project are propagated to both employee and resource plans. It shows you potential problems as visual constraint violations. This allows you to respond quickly and proactively to changing plans. You keep your planning of employees, machines, projects and maintenance activities up to date and see all the consequences of decisions made elsewhere in the plan.

People and machines are all in the right place at the right time.

Challenge 7: Jobs take longer than planned. You can’t figure out whyA job scheduled to take eight hours actually takes ten. Although the schedule was a tight fit with the labor regulations, in reality, rules were violated. You are unaware of the overrun because you don’t see time and attendance reports in real time. So you have no idea whether any labor rules are violated. To add to your frustration, regulations prohibit the employees from working another long shift.

The Quintiq response: Real-time feedback loops that alert you to labor rule violations.

Quintiq integrates mobile solutions with your planning platform, allowing you to process time and attendance reports, and check the rules against the plan and the situation on the ground. Engineers submit their timesheets and progress reports at the end of their shifts, keeping you in the loop. You can now check labor rules on planned shifts – but also on the hours worked in completed shifts.

Real-time feedback means you know exactly who is available, who has worked their maximum number of hours and how the actual execution compares to your initial plan.








“Quintiq’s tailored solution is a cut above our current systems. It supports an integral planning process affecting all of our divisions – from project tender and work preparation units to planning departments of personnel and machines. The solution will enable better project management and more effective use of resources.” – Jan Vos, CEO of VolkerRail








The infrastructure planning checklist

Make smart bids on tenders, taking into account the availability of all your resources?

See the consequences of deploying employees instead of a track-laying machine to fulfill a certain contract?

Visualize the consequences of a planning decision on KPIs?

Optimize your plan across multiple horizons: short-, mid- and long-term?

Minimize the impact of project overruns on other projects?

Swiftly identify the effects of unscheduled maintenance on your employee and project schedule?

Optimize use of possession time?

Respond quickly and effectively to unexpected events for quicker repairs?

Reduce the time needed to create and revise operational plans?

Save the costs of hiring unnecessary employees and renting equipment?

Incorporate all your unique planning requirements and constraints?

Support your planners with fast calculations, suggestions, alerts and intuitive visualizations?

Offer a single integrated solution for planning all your activities?

Plan your own machine maintenance?

Deploy resources intelligently in the case of an extended project scope?

Look for a tool that helps you manage the entire planning process in a single system,

including resources, projects, costs and KPIs.

Can you:








Quintiq enables you to plan across all time horizons

• Calculate effects of delays and unexpected events• Receive real-time alerts and suggestions on how to adjust plans• Select the best replacement in case of an employee’s sick alert• Enable communication between planners and all key players to ensure all plans remain accurate and up to date• Quickly make revisions to overcome disruptions

Day of operations (Hours, minutes ahead)

EmployeesProjects & maintenance Machines

• Perform multi-scenario planning to prepare for any event• Invest in hiring/training based on forecast demand and

your ability to meet it

• Evaluate different maintenance regimes• Pre-tender project planning

• Invest in buying or upgrading equipment based on forecast demand and your ability to meet it

• Create rosters that comply with all rules and regulations, including labor laws and working time legislation

• Create rosters that respect your employees’ preferences• Allocate and cover leave• Generate optimized and accurate employee rosters• Assign shifts to specific employees and teams to

maintain quality and continuity

• Bid scenarios• Capacity leveling for all resources and projects• Match possession time with project planning• Tender bidding • Prevent unneccesary hiring• Guarantee employee allocation

• Match specific jobs with machine availability, proximity and capacity

• Plan routine maintenance for minimal disruption and cost• Prevent unnecessary hiring of machines by seeing

availability across all projects

• Update your plans with the latest information• Accurately match employees’ skills and experience to

tasks• Create multi-resource plans that include employees,

vehicles, etc.

• Verify capacity allocation• Quickly see all consequences of last-minute changes to

the plan, get suggestions on how to resolve them• Keep the plan updated at all times

• Update your plans with last-minute information• Optimize against all resource-specific constraints such

as cleaning and set-up times• Allow for emergency maintenance with minimal

disruption and cost

2013 2014

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Long term (Years, months ahead)Strategic planning

Tactical planning

Operational planning

Mid term (Months, weeks ahead)

Short term (Days ahead)








The capabilities you’ve been exploring are part of the powerful Quintiq supply chain planning and optimization platform. Many of the world’s largest and most successful rail infrastructure contractors rely on Quintiq to:

1. Develop bids that are feasible and profitable.2. Select the right balance of employees and

machines to complete projects successfully.3. Integrate planned and emergency maintenance with

minimal impact on existing projects.4. Minimize the cost and associated effects of hiring

short-term staff or renting expensive equipment.5. Create integrated plans for all projects and

maintenance activities, employees and machines for all time horizons. Keep the impact of project overruns to a minimum.

6. Optimize their use of possession time to complete projects more efficiently.

7. Create and revise operational plans faster and with less effort.

For details on how the Quintiq solution can optimize your operations, visit www.quintiq.com or contact us.

Offices: www.quintiq.com/locationsEmail: [email protected] | Web: www.quintiq.comCopyright © 2013 Quintiq Inc. All rights reserved.

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