How ETCS technology will revolutionize the way railways operate

11

October

2018

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One of the main problems of rail transport is that an increase of the rail network’s capacity is very expensive since building new railways requires huge investments. A few weeks ago, the German Ministry of Transport introduced a study concerning rail transportation. The study concludes that modern signaling and control technology, such as the European Train Control System (ETCS), can increase the capacity of the network for passenger and freight transport by one fifth (Reuters, 2018).

 

What is the idea of ETCS?

The ETCS was originally designed to replace multiple incompatible legacy train control systems in the European Union’s rail network that used different operational procedures. The need occurred as a result of the ongoing integration of the European Union which lead to more cross border running trains. Additionally, liberalization of national railway markets increased the demand for a unified signal and control system (NSW, 2018).

 

So how does ETCS technology work?

ETCS technology uses a mix of electronic tracking and GPS location information and is implemented with standard trackside and train-borne equipment. Currently, ETCS Level 2 is the most advanced deployed application of ETCS technology. It includes wireless communication of movement in real time to the train conductor by using onboard computers that illustrate the information on a driver machine interface (NSW, 2018).

For further details about the functioning of the technology take a look at the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZNcJ1OZI8I

 

What will be the impact of the technological advancements?

ETCS will reduce maintenance costs of rail networks, since it makes line-side signals obsolete (Goodall & Dixon, 2015). Moreover, the technology will improve safety, services and operational availability. The implementation of ETCS also builds the basis for future technologies (NSW, 2018).

 

What is the outlook of ETCS technology?

The ETCS technology has the potential for taking over control from the driver in the long term. But until this degree of automation can be realized it will take some time due to network complexity that require investments  (Goodall & Dixon, 2015). How long this development will take exactly is not easy to answer. What is your opinion on that? When do you think full automation will be possible with ETCS technology?

 

 

References

Goodall, W., & Dixon, S. (2015). Transport in the Digital Age Disruptive Trends for Smart Mobility, (March). Retrieved from https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/uk/Documents/bps/deloitte-uk-transport-digital-age.pdf

NSW. (2018). The impact of introducing the European Train Control System on Sydney train crews. Retrieved from https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/system/files/media/documents/2018/FW 18-02 Impact of ETCS on Train Crew Scheduling WCAG.pdf

Reuters. (2018). So will die Bahn mehr Züge auf die Schiene bringen. Gründerszene. Retrieved from https://www.gruenderszene.de/automotive-mobility/so-will-die-bahn-mehr-zuege-auf-die-schiene-bringen

 

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Success story Ocado – How the supermarket disrupts itself with technology

13

September

2018

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Ocado started its operations 18 years ago and since then the company has tried to disrupt itself by adopting technology. This mantra proofed to be successful and helped the online retailer to reach a revenue of $1,4 billion in 2016 making it the world’s largest online-only grocery chain (Olson, 2017).

For retail companies, like Ocado, the firm’s efficiency is significantly influenced by its warehousing. Therefore, the business improved heavily its warehousing technology and developed a grid system. Enabled by a Novel Radio Communication System thousands of robots are able to communicate to each other and move along a grid to stack and select food boxes (McDonald, 2018). One robot can pick and pack an average order of 50 items in 5 minutes and travel between 50 km and 60 km a day (Godwin, 2018). Ocado’s new warehouses are able to deal with 50.000 kinds of products, three temperature regimes and products that have to be separated. In total the company processes 1,7 million items a day across its four fulfilment centers (Olson, 2017).

If you are interested to see how the warehouse automatization of Ocado looks like, have a look at the following video of Tech Insider:

Source: (TechInsider, 2018)

After the company realized how efficient and reliable the warehouse technology works and that it could also be useful for other retailers it released the Ocado Smart Platform. The platform works like a rental model. The customer pays rents for the robots and the system which will be operated by Ocado (Olson, 2017). Hence, the platform represents a new source of revenue for the online grocery chain.

Ocado invested heavily in the development of its software and acquired off-the-shelf technology if there was no need for re-invention. Almost 1.000 people are employed at Ocado Technology where the development takes place (Herrod, 2017). According to David Sharp, the head of technology at Ocado, his employees are working disruptively by choosing a big problem and then finding a transformational change. Sharp adds that “you have to work in the science fiction area to have the right thoughts” (McDonald, 2018). Let’s see what other exciting ideas Ocado comes up with in future.

 

References

Godwin, H. (2018). Step inside Ocado’s next generation warehouses. Retrieved 13 September 2018, from https://www.ocadotechnology.com/blog/step-inside-ocados-next-generation-warehouses/index.html

Herrod, E. (2017). Ocado : disrupting itself with technology, 1–7. Retrieved from https://internetretailing.net/magazine-articles/magazine-articles/ocado-disrupting-itself-with-technology

McDonald, C. (2018, September). How Ocado has disrupted its own model. ComputerWeekly, 9–11. Retrieved from https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252448108/How-Ocado-has-disrupted-its-own-model

Olson, P. (2017). Ocado Is Building A Robot Army To Shop For Your Groceries. Forbes, 1–6. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2017/11/16/ocado-robots-ai-grocery-delivery/#4701d89d3d36

TechInsider. (2018). Inside A Warehouse Where Thousands Of Robots Pack Groceries. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E&feature=youtu.be

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