Rome, 14 December 2018
Last generation sensors on board trains to increase the detection of anomalies. Dynamic assignment of seating to maximize revenues. Co-working to redevelop the heritage of no longer utilized railway spaces.
These are the three innovative ideas, proposed by employees recognized in Rome as part of the entrepreneurial Innovate project of the Italian FS Group that distinguished themselves for operational merit and their ability to contribute to the overall improvement of operations.
The S4R project is designed to increase train safety with continuous monitoring using the latest generation of sensors that can directly be applied to trains. Together with the technological systems already installed, the S4R control system detects various anomalies and timely intercepts maintenance needs, both of the network and of the trains.
The Seat Surfing project responds to Trenitalia's need to increase the load factor of trains, giving people the opportunity to dynamically book a seat on board the train. In practice, the system, even when the train is perceived to be full despite some free seats during various legs of the trip, can assign a temporary seat to the traveller who will switch seats during the entire trip occupying those seats that are available during the different legs. This solution was developed after 75% of the people interviewed on the subject expressed a favourable opinion.
In order to meet the needs of the ever-changing workforce world, the Treasure Co-Island project plans to allocate part of FS Italiane's real estate assets, no longer functional to railway activity, to co-working spaces with innovative layouts.
"We launched the Innovate program with great enthusiasm because we believe that the involvement of all employees is fundamental for growing the FS Italiane Group in terms of innovation, digitization and sustainability" declared Alessandro La Rocca, Director of Innovation and Information Systems at FS Italiane. "The results obtained, in these months of work, will allow us to expand the range of cutting-edge solutions available to Group companies".
Innovate is a project launched in April 2018 by FS Italiane. It was created to gather ideas and opportunities and transform them into innovation projects, bringing together people from different companies within the Group. There were over one thousand ideas pitched by employees. Twenty of these were selected. During two developmental days, real business projects were grown.
The top ten entered an acceleration phase lasting ten weeks in which, in order to assess the technical and economic feasibility, ad hoc business models were created.