Rail Industry
Data-Driven Quality Planning for Rail Projects
Alstom is a French company and a global leader in rail transport, headquartered in France and employing over 85,000 people. It operates in more than 60 countries, with a strong presence in Europe as well as growing markets worldwide. The company focuses on providing complete rail solutions, including trains (like metros and high-speed trains), signalling systems, infrastructure, and maintenance services.
Alstom
Stockholm, Sweden
Challenge
Workload Visability
The team faced difficulties in estimating workload consistently across projects. Project quality activities were tracked inconsistently, making planning reactive and limiting management visibility into team capacity and engagement.
Solution
Standardized Estimation and Tracking Tools
A structured approach was introduced to capture real activity-level input from the team, define bottom-up workload estimation logic, and create simple tools that could be used consistently across the project portfolio.
Implementation & Execution
Implementation & Execution
Quality Workload Estimator
A standardized estimator was developed based on quality activities and effort weightage, supporting workload balancing and resource planning.
Quality Activity Tracker
A centralized macro-enabled tracker was built to list projects, project status, scope, assigned PrQSM, QA activities, effort estimates, and workload classification.
Result
Improved Planning and Decision-Making
Improved Planning and Decision-Making
The solution improved workload visibility, enabled better resource allocation, enhanced planning and prioritization, and created a more standardized approach to quality planning across projects.
Future Outlook
Power BI and Real-Time Visibility
The next step is to enable monthly or quarterly workload calculation, compare planned versus actual workload, and develop Power BI dashboards for real-time reporting.
Bharath Boregowda
Functional safety engineer