On 11 December, UIC organised its first workshop of European Rail Freight CIOs, in Vienna, at the kind invitation of Rail Cargo Group. Clemens Först, CEO RCG, welcomed participants and emphasised the role of digitalisation as a tool to improve current rail services and propose competitive products matching customers’ expectations. He reminded the meeting that digitalisation is indeed a key tool to support one of the three levers on the basis of which the ambitious modal shift committed to by the Rail Freight Companies in their vision “30 by 2030” can be realised.

In order to kick start the brainstorm session, participants exchanged with Gilles Peterhans, Secretary General of UIP, who provided some insight into how wagon keepers, collectively, embarked upon the digital challenge. If one recommendation were to be drawn from this lively exchange it would be “KISS”… keep it simple!

This first brainstorm seminar was aimed at tackling collectively issues such as:

• How to ensure individual initiatives don’t lead to interoperability problems
• How to maximise economies of scale
• How to share data
• How to ensure data quality prevails over quantity
• Etc.

A second workshop is planned in Paris in February 2019 during which the road map will be further discussed and fine-tuned so as to be presented and discussed with all Freight CEOs at their next High-Level Freight Meeting.

Participating companies were: RCG, CFL, ZSSK Cargo, SNCF Fret, Lineas, SBB Cargo, BLS, DB Cargo, Mercitalia, VDV, CIT. The group is open to all CIOs/CDOs.