Application of Digitalisation in Staffing Planning for Railway Infrastructure Maintenance

Existing and suggested approaches to development of staffing plans regarding infrastructure maintenance are analysed from the point of view of ensuring interests of a railway infrastructure company, using example of JSC Russian Railways.

The existing methodology of planning workforce involved in maintenance of the railway infrastructure is based on the use of average values of parameters resulted from monitoring of the state of infrastructure structures, roadbed and track devices conducted monthly, as well as during autumn and spring continuous inspections and checks of the track. The received values of work to be performed only implicitly reflect the required number of workers, effective involvement in operation, and efficiency of each worker.

The modern trend towards digitalisation and cybernation of all processes, when organising maintenance of the track infrastructure, provides for maximum social adaptation of production processes to requests of owners, tasks of organisers and interests of performers. Staff planning based only on the volume of work to be performed does not allow digitalisation and social cybernation of an individual performer.

The syntagmatic component of such an algorithm is the monthly total worked time, which is determined by the actual engagement of each performer. The paradigmatic component of such models should be the same daily number of performers. The stage of preliminary assessment of application of the proposed algorithm for digitalisation and social cybernation of workforce planning supposed an increase in labour productivity, approximately by 20–25 %, an increase in quality of work and a more effective assessment of activities of each performer. 

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