Rethinking staff rostering
Article: DB Fahrwegdienste (Track Services) is digitalising staff rostering for trackside work
10/2024 – An app instead of paper and Excel: DB Fahrwegdienste personnel work outside on the track and secure the tracks for construction work. Together with DB Systel, Fahrwegdienste have digitised their staff rostering and activity recording.
At many locations along the 33,000 kilometres of rail track in Germany, grass cutting, repairs and safety works have to be carried out every day. DB Fahrwegdienste, as a subsidiary of DB InfraGO, specialises precisely in these services: "We are the provider of trackside system services and have a total of five business segments," reports Edgar Schülke, project manager for digitalisation at DB Fahrwegdienste. The majority of the approximately 3,000 employees work in the "Building Site Services" division.
Building Site Services takes care of barriers and various warning systems at engineering worksites or level crossings, for example. This is always essential when personnel are working on the track. This happens every day, in many places at the same time. The other divisions of DB Fahrwegdienste supply engineering worksites with materials, fly drones, take care of environmental and project management, but above all carry out very tangible maintenance along the line - in the form of winter services, forestry or vegetation work.
Managing thousands of activities with Excel and Access
Orders arrive at the DB Fahrwegdienste offices in various ways and in practice have a lead time of only a few days. Previously, the individual branch offices managed these orders and the staff rostering using their own Excel spreadsheets: "Each of the seven branch offices has different Excel formats and in addition there was an Access database," says Schülke.
These tried and tested Excel processes have so far served their purpose, but are unnecessarily complicated as a solution for staff rostering: "I have staff assignment plan, plus a sort of engineering worksite list and have to insert the same information everywhere in a different format – and then change it again if I have to reschedule at short notice," explains Schülke. For very experienced dispatchers, these processes are no great problem thanks to the routine and, using copy and paste all the time, they are even surprisingly fast. This complexity, however, is a major obstacle in the training of new colleagues: "Our business is not self-explanatory in any case," says the digitalisation manager.
"As a new dispatcher, I would currently have no overview: who is travelling from where and who has what qualifications?" This is important information for efficiently assigning the right personnel for the respective tasks and avoiding unnecessarily long journeys. If too many dispatchers are working in Excel at the same time, important formatting might also get lost: "Then nobody would know who had informed whom," says Schülke. The decentralised, slightly differing processes of the branch offices do not provide the head office with an ideal overview either.
"Someone has to re-enter the scheduling that has already been completed into the database. We have a lot of work to do in terms of KPI-orientated corporate management, which we hope will be available at the touch of a button in the future." In 2022, the management finally commissioned a new solution. "The aim is to increase efficiency in the dispatching and hourly billing process and to establish standards", says Schülke. It was important to the management that their colleagues who actually work with the systems were involved right from the start: "The people affected should be the ones who design the projects."
Two projects become one
The search for a standardised process and an equally standardised software solution for all branch offices thus began in 2022. "Right from the start, I wanted a standard solution rather than to have something developed," recalls Schülke. "Because the process we are dealing with – sending personnel with the right technology and the right qualifications to the right place at the right time – is not rocket science; every company with a technical field service has it." In this phase, two digitisation projects initially merged into one: digital staff rostering and the digital performance record, which was to replace the paper slips on the construction site.
This is because the documentation of working time also had a lot of potential for digitisation: "Our employees work outside on the track, in the forest, in the field. They record their services on a service sheet and have it signed by the client on site," says Schülke. However, the service documentation does not end its journey there: These timesheets are forwarded and approved several times, either physically or in PDF format, until the work can finally be invoiced.
The field service cloud solution for technical activities
After Schülke had recorded the requirements with the dispatching managers and defined the basic processes, an initial list of requirements was drawn up: "We set off with this list and started by asking around in the Group." This is where the paths of DB Fahrwegdienste and DB Systel crossed: "During this research phase, I came across the MBA team at DB Systel," recalls Schülke. The MBA team ("Microsoft Business Applications") specialises in the various business applications of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft Power Platform.
Dennis Fischer, Product Owner in this team, remembers the initial contact: "In a discovery call, we sounded out what the high-level requirements are and whether Dynamics with the 'Field Service Module' would be a possible solution." This module is specially designed for the service design and the dispatch of the field service. Once the project was under way, the MBA team at DB Systel quickly tackled the practical aspects: "Together with our partner Avanade - a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft - we looked at the processes and recreated them in a demo environment. This is so you can see how something like this can work - not just imagine it, but actually get to see it," reports Fischer.
"With Microsoft Dynamics 365, we can rely on one of the standard platforms in the Group and that has made our lives a lot easier," says Fischer. This is because DB Systel also complies with corporate guidelines on important topics such as security and data protection for such cloud solutions: "To ensure better collaboration within the DB Group and for us to be sure of DB Systel and this solution, it was crucial that all these issues are coordinated in the background," affirms Edgar Schülke from DB Fahrwegdienste.
In the detail, the Fahrwegdienste business differs from other companies that dispatch technical personnel. "Field service is intended for conventional activities such as copier repairs. Our business is different, however; we have only one assignment per day, and we usually have only one location - but we have fixed times, for example, and the subject of qualifications is very important to us." Dennis Fischer adds: "We have thought through the entire process from the viewpoints of many users and optimised it for everyone: dispatching, service management, operational personnel, time recording, commercial staff."
The new standard solution with customised extras and its own app
Helpful software adaptations turned the standard solution into a customised application for Fahrwegdienste without straying from the standard: The system now automatically checks working hours during the dispatching process: "Are the rest periods correct, are colleagues not working outdoors for too long? That was a considerable amount of customisation", says Schülke. Not least, the adjustments were also aimed at minimising the number of steps or clicks required in order to promote acceptance of the new solution. One particularly important step in the project was the specially developed Power App, which accompanies all operatives on their trackside activities. Employees can see their bookings in the app: what is planned for them, when and where. The previously paper-based service records are now also digitised in this app. Employees record their working hours and have them digitally signed off. The process also allows the operation manager to enter the performance of the entire squad and have them signed off together, as was previously possible on paper. Last but not least, employees can use the application to check the overview of their time entries.
"The beauty of Dynamics is that there are different paths to the goal, not just one hard process route," says Schülke. "In other words, we always considered two personas during development. One is the experienced dispatcher who simply wants to book jobs more quickly." Dispatchers can then simply assign the work orders by dragging and dropping, or from within the order. The second target group are the less experienced dispatchers. These are given specific support by the system: "That means I can click on the operation in which the requirements are defined and can let the software show me: which employees have the right qualifications and who is available? And I can see on a map who is starting as close as possible to the planned activity," says Schülke in summing up.
The foundation for further process digitisation
All these adjustments and their tests took around a year in total, the two report. "We followed the sprint principle during development. Every two sprints - i.e. every four weeks - we met with almost all branch offices in Frankfurt, tested the sprint results for two to three days and were able to give feedback to the developers straight away," recalls Schülke. "Our entire project team was highly committed to the project, partly because they wanted to move away from the Excel solution." In a pilot project, two branch offices were initially able to test the solutions in practice. The feedback was incorporated directly into the next sprints. The solution has been rolled out in these two branch offices since May 2024.
When a total of around 1,300 employees in the office and on the tracks receive new systems, there is a lot to explain. Here too, DB Systel provides support with technical training. One branch office after another will receive the new solution by the end of 2024. Meanwhile, employees continue to use their usual tools for the time being. In future, DB Fahrwegdienste will be able to build on the work already carried out in the project. Edgar Schülke sums up as follows: "The solution forms the basis for further digitisation. As long as everything was only in Excel, you couldn't even think about it." Dennis Fischer from DB Systel adds: "It is quite clear that this is not just scheduling, but the entire process on the part of the Fahrwegdienste - from order to billing - is on the cusp of digitisation."