Systems Control in Railway Transport, Challenges Towards Managing Integration

The growing demand for optimal rail mobility requires an efficient and well-integrated railway system, one which can cope with technical, logistical, and environmental constraints, to enable sustainable growth. This demand has led to numerous (proposed) changes in railways, including in the Dutch railway system. Because of this, managing system integration is currently a trending topic. Besides technology, systems integration involves humans, organizations, processes, and information sharing. Hence, challenges related to system integration can be manifold. In order to get insight into these integration challenges in practice, 43 semi-structured exploratory interviews are conducted in the Dutch railway context. In our qualitative data analysis, challenges are analyzed from two frameworks taking a systems perspective. This research reveals numerous challenges faced in this context, most dominant here is the desire to effectively manage changes. Specifically, our analysis and subsequent mapping on systems control theory shows that many of these challenges revolve around effective control in the railway system. Finally, our research shows that future research should be aimed at gaining early insight and models on changes to be integrated into railway systems. In addition, the findings of this research can be used to help practitioners and researchers to work towards not only recognizing but also resolving the specified integration challenges.