The main objective of the event was for the IT specialists of Ab Ovo, who developed the RCS system, to discuss directly with their customers’ development experts those trends that will have a significant impact on the IT developments of railway companies and thus also on the medium-term customer needs-oriented development of the RCS system. During the two-day meeting, international railway experts gave presentations on various topics, such as the current and expected economic and logistics trends, the status of railway digitization or the expected development trends.

The event also included an interactive workshop in which three working groups discussed special development options relating to the railway IT systems developed by Ab Ovo. This was a very important part of the meeting because not only Ab Ovo could collect and assess its customer needs regarding the operation of these systems, but also the railway companies had the opportunity to learn about the development processes taking place at Ab Ovo and to exchange directly with the head of the programming group.

The event closed with the conclusion that there are numerous challenges in the world of rail freight transport today, but at the same time a lot of new opportunities to effectively master these challenges with digital developments. The participants also noted that the more efficient use, planning and monitoring of existing resources and capacities of the railways (tangible assets, locomotives and rolling stock, personnel) is becoming more important due to the ever scarcer resources and that IT specialists and railway software developers can make an important contribution with their forward-looking and effective digital solutions.

The day after the event, the GYSEV CARGO team visited the port city of Rotterdam and inspected the terminal hub of Rail Service Center Rotterdam as well as their IT and telecommunications solutions.