French Railway Company Research Articles

Understanding the stereotypes of Millennials in the workplace

AbstractRecent research on the generations in the workplace has acknowledged the role organizations play in creating generations and the stereotypes associated with them. However, how these stereotypes are formed has yet to be empirically explored. This paper analyzes the stereotypes associated with Millennials based on an in‐depth case study of a population of drivers in a French railway company. This shows that these stereotypes mostly reflect the transformation of professional and organizational identities. The “elders” differentiate themselves from the new organizational generation to enhance the appearance of their skills, knowledge, and values, thus maintaining a balance of power that is favorable to them. Stereotypes also represent generational imprints that work as time markers in shaping the collective memory of their profession. By exploring the relationship among organizational changes, organizational generations, and generational stereotypes, this research produces a more complete understanding of the generational phenomenon in the workplace.

Environmental and Techno-economic Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Storage Systems in Railway supply system

During rush hours, catenary voltage drop is a significant issue on the 1,5kV – DC lines. Indeed, when voltage drop occures between two substations, the trains can't accelerate as they should. Among the solutions that could solve such a problem, the development of a new traditionnal substation in the middle of two others, also the integration of wayside Energy Storage Systems (ESS). This paper deals with the development on Energy Storage Systems (ESS) in the SNCF (French Railway Company) railway network. It aims to study the techno-economic interests of such innovations, also to investigate the environmental impact they could have. The assessment is based on the comparison of a traditional railway 1,5kV–DC substation and a battery-based substation.

Reviewing procurement: a change management model based on action research

This paper proposes an iterative model for the make or buy of procurement linked to organisational change management. In a multi-year action research case study, the researcher was part of the project team reviewing procurement at the French railway company. Both the outsourcing of procurement, as a strategic activity of the firm and the proposal of a model for the review process remain underexplored in the academic literature. This paper aims to contribute knowledge to how the key function of procurement can be successfully reorganised in a large firm as part of a change process. The authors find that within the structured change process, an underlying process is detectable, characterised by initiatives being launched, resistance to them (varying in scope and scale), followed by mitigation. Thus, in this case study, changing the procurement organisation of a large firm is shown to be an adaptive and emergent process, where what lies beneath the surface is as important as what is planned.

Reviewing procurement: a change management model based on action research

This paper proposes an iterative model for the make or buy of procurement linked to organisational change management. In a multi-year action research case study, the researcher was part of the project team reviewing procurement at the French railway company. Both the outsourcing of procurement, as a strategic activity of the firm and the proposal of a model for the review process remain underexplored in the academic literature. This paper aims to contribute knowledge to how the key function of procurement can be successfully reorganised in a large firm as part of a change process. The authors find that within the structured change process, an underlying process is detectable, characterised by initiatives being launched, resistance to them (varying in scope and scale), followed by mitigation. Thus, in this case study, changing the procurement organisation of a large firm is shown to be an adaptive and emergent process, where what lies beneath the surface is as important as what is planned.

Organisational uptake of scientific information about climate change by infrastructure managers: the case of adaptation of the French railway company

Future development and renewal of transport infrastructures have to take into account how the effects of climate change will affect these complex sociotechnical systems. This article aims at understanding how to raise this issue to ensure an efficient and systemic uptake of climate change by infrastructure managers. It reports the results of an in-depth case study conducted on the French railway company. This study identifies several adaptation dynamics: one is top-down and stems from climate change impacts; others are more bottom-up and focused on vulnerabilities. However, both types of approaches have, so far, yielded limited results. Building on the existing literature, this paper reveals critical bottlenecks to overcome in order to get the organization ready to adapt. It suggests key components of an enabling framework for a more proactive preparation to climate change and mainstreaming climate adaptation into major organisational decisions.

L’identification à l’organisation en contexte de changement. Le cas de la SNCF

Les periodes de changement organisationnel cristallisent de nombreux enjeux manageriaux lies a l’identification des salaries a leur entreprise. A partir d’une etude de la litterature sur les theories de l’identification et d’une enquete exploratoire menee au sein de la SNCF, les auteurs interrogent l’effet d’un changement percu de l’identite organisationnelle sur l’identification des employes a l’organisation. En mobilisant plusieurs notions – la perception du changement de l’identite organisationnelle, le processus d’identification, les formes d’identification et les formes identitaires – cet article permet d’articuler ces concepts, separes jusqu’alors.

Piecewise deterministic Markov processes and maintenance modeling: application to maintenance of a train air-conditioning system

This paper deals with the preventive maintenance (PM) optimization of air-conditioning systems used aboard regional trains in France by the SNCF (French Railway Company). Two kinds of PM policies are envisioned: one with a single overhaul in the whole lifetime of the air-conditioning system, another with opportunistic replacements of components that are too old at each system failure. The air-conditioning system is formed of about 20 ageing and stochastically independent components. The envisioned PM policies make them functionally dependent, however. Both PM optimizations are performed with respect to the same cost function, involving the mean number of component replacements on some finite horizon. In view of its numerical assessment, a piecewise deterministic Markov processes (PDMP) model is used, both to model the maintained and the unmaintained system; a deterministic numerical scheme is next proposed, based on finite volume (FV) methods for PDMPs; owing to difficulties in its implementation, an approximation of this scheme is next used, which is much easier to implement than the initial FV scheme. As a result of using this method, it was finally possible to optimize both PM policies, which are both proved to lower the cost function of about 7 per cent.

A double tuned rail damper—increased damping at the two first pinned–pinned frequencies

Railway-induced vibrations are a growing matter of environmental concern. The rapid development of transportation, the increase of vehicle speeds and vehicle weights have resulted in higher vibration levels. In the meantime vibrations that were tolerated in the past are now considered to be a nuisance. Numerous solutions have been proposed to remedy these problems. The majority only acts on a specific part of the dynamic behaviour of the track. This paper presents a possible solution to reduce the noise generated by the ‘pinned–pinned’ frequencies. Pinned–pinned frequencies correspond with standing waves whose nodes are positioned exactly at the sleeper supports. The two first pinned–pinned frequencies are situated approximately at 950 and 2200 Hz (UIC60-rail and sleeper spacing of 0.60 m). To attenuate these vibrations, the Department of MEMC at the VUB has developed a dynamic vibration absorber called the Double Tuned Rail Damper (DTRD). The DTRD is mounted between two sleepers on the rail and is powered by the motion of the rail. The DTRD consists of two major parts: a steel plate which is connected to the rail with an interface of an elastic layer, and a rubber mass. The two first resonance frequencies of the steel plate coincide with the targeted pinned–pinned frequencies of the rail. The rubber mass acts as a motion controller and energy absorber. Measurements at a test track of the French railway company (SNCF) have shown considerable attenuation of the envisaged pinned–pinned frequencies. The attenuation rate surpasses 5 dB/m at certain frequency bands.

MEDES: Contact wire wear measuring system used by the Spanish National Railway (RENFE)

Measuring systems that detect automatically the degree of wire wear are necessary in order to carry out an efficient infrastructure management and maintenance based on the contact wire condition. An automatic inspection system for overhead wires will be described in this paper. This system has been designed by UPM-DIE (División de Ingeniería Electrónica, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and funded by RENFE (Spanish National Railway). Currently, the MEDES system is installed and operative in laboratory coaches used by RENFE (Spanish National Railway) and SNCF (French Railway Company). It is based on a computer vision system taking advantage of good reflecting characteristics of the wearing track of the overhead wire. The wearing track is illuminated using laser diodes at 810nm. Charge coupled device (CCD) linear cameras capture the reflected light. A brief contact wire wear measuring systems overview will also be presented.

Reactive scheduling of complex system maintenance in a cooperative environment with communication times

This paper focuses on the problem of complex system maintenance in a cooperative environment composed of several decision centers, taking into account communication times. Maintenance activities generate a specific issue for the scheduling of tasks since they identify, dynamically, new tasks, or modify the duration of planned tasks. In addition, when an unexpected event is detected by a decision center, some modifications of the schedule required by this decision center may have consequences on tasks under the control of other decision centers. In fact, some constraints exist between the jobs under the control of different decision centers. Each modification of the execution of a job should be submitted to the approval of each concerned decision center, implying a communication time between all these decision centers. Nevertheless, these communication times may not be compatible with desired modifications. This is why we present an algorithm to ensure rescheduling feasibility, including communication times between decision centers for the maintenance of complex systems in a coordinated environment. Finally, we implement our algorithm on the industrial context of the TGV maintenance in the French railway company.

Individual characteristics in occupational accidents due to imbalance: a case-control study of the employees of a railway company

Background: Falls are frequent occupational accidents, and are responsible for a significant amount of lost working time and, more importantly, for a high mortality. The factors involved in falling mechanisms...

ALORS: a skimming parser for spontaneous speech processing

This paper describes a parser for processing spontaneous spoken utterances which deals with both dislocation and “noise” phenomena. The parser is built upon a timetable corpus collected in an information center of the SNCF (French railway company). With spontaneous speech we consider that the only relevant problems are those that have been found in a corpus. Our corpus has been recorded in a human/machine situation and in a human/human situation in order to observe how the linguistic behavior provoked by the machine, changes automatic processing. As this work deals with cognitive levels, ALORS processes a keyboard input. Using a skimming strategy, it takes into account some aspects of speech recognition, and we evaluate its compatibility with word spotting speech recognition.