On February 20, 2023 Qnamic celebrated its 20th anniversary. Over such a long period many people join or leave a company. The member of the administrative board Hans Flury played an important role for Qnamic since its founding. But on February 23, 2023 Mister Flury left the company and put down his duties in the administrative board.

“I have been part of this highly innovative company and its development for 20 years and for that I’m very grateful. I really enjoyed the time but now it’s time to pass my duties to new hands. I wish the Qnamic AG great success on its further way “, said Hans Flury.

Chairman of the board Dirk Pfeiffer thanked Hans Flury and emphasized his role for the Qnamic AG once more: “Hans Flury was not only an important funding member and layed the foundation for RailOpt, but with his engagement and vision he was always an integral part of our company. Hans Flury made an important contribution for the company’s success over the years. For this I sincerly thank him in the name of the Qnamic AG!”

Qnamic is turning 20 and that’s a cause for celebration! This anniversary also indicates, that our RailOpt solution is a product that is of great value for our users and is elementary part of their daily work.

For chairman of the board Dirk Pfeiffer the success originates from the uniqueness of the product:”When we started Qnamic, we had a unique proposition, being the only ones who combined simultaneous and integrated planning and dispatching of all involved resources in one software. That was a paradigm shift”, the Qnamic co-founder says.

Our users saw that and express the highest satisfaction with our product and way of working. All projects have been completed successfully. Furthermore we’re in a continuous dialogue with our users and integrate their experience and proposals in the further development of our product systematically.

Consequently we established strategic partnerships: These are a further success factor for Dirk Pfeiffer:”Our long-time partnerships with all of our users, especially with CFL & SOB, enable us to develop our product with a practical orientation and to retain and even extend our market leadership.”

The constant development of the product and the company itself is a focal point for COO Bruno Pfeiffer as well: “We gained good experiences working on research projects recently. Especially our cooperation with the OST technical college, where we were able to develop a completely new tool with DSSplus proved a success. Since Optimization is in our DNA, we will participate in such projects in the future. This way we will be able to apply latest scientific insights on the challenges surrounding dispatching.”

Qnamic’s journey is far from over. We thank all our long-term users, partners and our committed employees, who have accompanied us so far. We’re looking forward to continuing our work with you in the future!

As a subsidiary of the TX Logistik AG, which moves 8.6 b. tonne-kilometres on 22.000 trains per year, the TXLOGISTIK Switzerland GmbH does its part to ensure the performance of European supply-chains. The company’s manager Detlef Bartsch searched for a mature resource management system and a reliable partner to help achieve this essential task. “We needed a quick, mature solution that meets the high standards of Swiss rail traffic. It was important to us, that we would cooperate with a company that has a lot of experience in this sector and a deep understanding of the processes of railway companies”, said Bartsch.

With RailOpt and Qnamic, TX Switzerland found both: after a short but intensive introduction phase, our consultants were able to put the software into full production within 4 days. The flexibility of the solution and the practical experience of all project members were critical for the quick implementation, said Bartsch.

Since mid-December RailOpt supports TX with moving cargo economically and sustainably all over Europe.

After the qnamic team implemented some fundamental technical and functional changes for RailOpt with R6.9, Release 2022.2 was more about finetuning. We’d like to introduce two highlights of the many adjustments:

• Labor Law Enhancements:

We added new work time rules to the existing ones. Together with adjustments in the configurations, we made it easier to monitor the compliance to working time regulations.

• New work time rules issue a conflict notification, if a false type of break is planned for a service.
• Violations of working time arrangements due to subsequent changes of working times by employees are shown immediately.
• New work time rules support planners by checking the compliance to the rules of planning successive long night shifts.
• Another new rule supports optimal distribution of working time over employees by minimizing their effective working time (without surcharges) including sideline activities.

• Dispatching & short term planning: The multiple allocation of a vehicle to frameworks is denied and ruled out as a source of error in planning.

• A new table now shows vehicle, vehicle pool and logical vehicle clearly. With a new filter already planned vehicles can be hidden.
• If a vehicle is nevertheless scheduled several times in the terms of short term planning, a conflict notification will be issued.
• A newly introduced symbol shows clearly to the dispatcher on the planning grid, if an allocation of a vehicle was removed and thus the vehicle is available again.

Since we’re constantly improving our product for and with our users, the preparations for the spring release 2023 are going on at full speed. A Highlight for 2023.1 will be extension of the graphic time tables: many of our users use this function very actively in their daily work, it now will be accessible via the planning board.

Pre- & Post- Run activities are inseparably linked to a train run and so they were integrated in the model since RailOpt’s initial concept. Nevertheless, the possibility for flexible planning of these activities in while considering all involved resources is still a feature unique to Qnamic’s planning & dispatching solution. With the release of RailOpt 6.9, we took this functionality a step further: with a redesigned interface and enhanced data structures, we were able to improve the user-friendliness, improve the potential for optimization & automatization and significantly reduce the potential for human error.

These new Pre- & Post- Run activies have now gone into production for the long- standing RailOpt users of the Schweizerische Südostbahn AG (SOB) and other organizations. The planners & dispatchers have now provided the initial verdict: Urs Oberholzer, head of Service & Quality in transport with SOB, emphasizes that SOB’s planners are very pleased with the new enhancement. Especially for train drivers, the even more detailed service plan was a substantial improvement: A concise table shows the process of the Pre- & Post- Rund activities in exact details. It presents the tasks at hand even more granularly and with even greater clarity than the previous implementation.

The enhancement simplifies adding or removing individual steps of the process. The dispatcher has the opportunity to adapt the process to the given situation quickly and directly at any time. All changes are adopted in the gantt- chart immediately and mobile solution immediately, making the communication between the personell more transparent. For Urs Oberholzer this means specifically that reliability has improved further and human mistakes are prevented.

Because the planning of Pre- & Post- Run activities is a very complex task on the one hand, but a common one on the other hand, we improved the function for creating templates significantly. The new data model offers completely new options for automation of tasks that previously had to be planned manually, Oberholzer says. This statement corresponds with our testing results: Testers created complex process structures three times faster, with a lower error rate compared to the previous implementation.

With release 6.9 now in production: Practice confirms what the tests promised and what our team hoped for while planning the new Pre- & Post- Run activities: the functionality reduces complexity, frees up resources and supports train drivers and dispatchers. All in all, the enhancement improves reliability and therefore the safety and robustness of rail traffic.

Please contact us for further information!

KONTAKT Qnamic

Due to the current situation “Covid-19 pandemic”, the annual User Group Meeting had to be postponed. On 3 June 2020, a virtual User Group Meeting will take place as a replacement. The physical meeting is expected to take place on 23/24 September 2020.

The production of passenger transport services by a railway company is a complex and long-lasting process that starts years in advance with the first idea for an offer and leads to detailed invoicing and key figures for the services provided. It is important to have an overview of the available vehicles, personnel, and services at all times. The assignments must also be planned in great detail.

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