The Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH (rnv) operates city railway, tram and bus lines in three large catchment areas in Mannheim, Heidelberg and Ludwigshafen. It has Germany's largest continuous meter-gauge network (208 kilometers), over 451 vehicles, three depots and parking slots. On average, half a million passengers use the mobility services on a regular weekday. Many of the services are already what is considered “green”. This is because the e-buses, trams and “last-mile shuttles”, as well as the depots, are all powered by 100% certified green electricity. rnv aims to operate exclusively with green electricity by 2032.
Analog planning: Complexity can no longer be managed
An important lever for relocating the corporate strategy is digitization – for every aspect of rnv. It should help to optimize workflows, increase efficiency and reduce costs. After the successful consolidation and digitization of numerous processes in the operations center in Mannheim, the decision was also made to centralize vehicle disposiion and to bring internal and external processes closer together.
Until now, planning at the individual locations was done with Excel lists and the like. However, this form of disposition was no longer optimal, and in some cases no longer feasible due to the increased complexity, at the latest when the transport companies from the three cities of Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen merged.
This was the starting point for the introduction of the PSItraffic/DMS depot management system – one of several digitization projects led by Dirk Zimmermann.
Software: a prerequisite for further development
By using the DMS, rnv aims, among other things, to coordinate operational processes across locations, which has allowed it to optimize its efforts in many areas. For example, the central 24/7 vehicle disposition has freed up valuable capacities for advancing other urgent tasks.
Every day, more than 450 vehicles are dispatched, maintained, cleaned and refueled at our depots. This requires a lot of cogs to interlock. Without the software, it would be impossible to keep an eye on all the relevant factors and efficiently harmonize the respective processes.
This applies, for example, to fault management, but especially to the delivery of vehicles to workshops. In Mannheim, for example, the workshops coordinated the delivery of vehicles themselves – the requirements of daily operations were not always taken into account here. In addition, the deliveries were linked to complex, mostly paper-based, coordination processes – this was neither up-to-date nor efficient.
From the department's point of view, the generous vehicle reservations were logical. However, from a holistic perspective, this led to unnecessary and expensive downtime for vehicles that are urgently needed in daily operations, according to the project manager.
Today, the integration of workshop processes into the DMS provides a high level of transparency across all job sheets, ensuring that resources are optimized. For example, if a driver reports a fault using a tablet, the message is sent from the SAP system via an interface to the DMS and to the workshop. The workshop immediately checks whether the problem needs to be rectified immediately. If it does, the system updates the planning in real time, while ensuring that the vehicle remains on schedule. If there is time to rectify the fault, the software optimizes the workshop scheduling, taking into account all other operational requirements.
Circulation allocation: electric, hydrogen and diesel buses
The be-all and end-all of every transport company is to ensure reliable operations. Sophisticated planning processes run in the background to ensure that every train and every bus departs and arrives on time. At its core, one of the tasks is to assign available vehicles to open blocks (tours). Particularly in the bus sector and against the background of the gradual conversion from diesel to electric and hydrogen vehicles, the demands on planning have become significantly more complex and challenging.
“Without the addition of a load and charging management module to the E-DMS, this would not be possible at all,” says Zimmermann. The system takes into account the respective (individual) state of charge of the vehicle batteries (SOC) when assigning routes, while also aiming for optimized energy use – among other things, to avoid overloading the grids and expensive load peaks.
What also comes into play here, in particular, is that rnv now uses e-buses from three different generations, which, with their different ranges, do not fit all or different blocks (tours). If the blocks (tours) are longer than the e-ranges, the system plans to use diesel vehicles and, in the future, hydrogen buses.
Optimized use of floor space
The fully automatic allocation of parking spaces is also closely linked to the assignment of vehicles to blocks (tours). Here, too, the high capacity utilization of the depots in the course of the expansion of public transport has led to requirements that can only be met across the many locations with the help of software. Some depots are now so busy that assigning parking spaces in the evening is like playing Tetris. There is little space available, and the aim is to maneuver as little as possible. In the rail sector, twelve different vehicle types with different lengths have to be assigned to the routes.
In both areas, the DMS identifies the most suitable parking space, taking into account the next blocks (tours) and enabling the efficient use of the available space and routes. According to Zimmermann, a digital workflow is linked to this that meets all requirements. If a vehicle is parked incorrectly, the system automatically reallocates it or indicates the identified error to the disponent so that they can react in time.
Autonomous in the future
For the rnv, the centralized automatic vehicle disposiion with PSItraffic/DMS has paid off. It is efficient, saves considerable effort, and employees enjoy working with the system. Above all, the software makes the work of the disponents much easier.
It has to be said that a lot of what has to do with the development of our company would not be possible without the E-DMS. This applies above all to our newly planned depots and the support of autonomous driving. PSItraffic/DMS is the basic requirement for this.
Conclusion: well positioned for the public transport of the future
The rnv has set the signals for the future of public transport. The scheduling processes will be much more demanding than in the past. Thanks to the PSItraffic/DMS depot management system, the company can confidently take the long road from Excel planning to pure monitoring of planning results. This means that the company is well equipped, not least in terms of software, to achieve the goal of climate neutrality by 2032.