Incompany training to uncover material management concept - voestalpine Track Solutions Netherlands B.V.

21 December 2018 |

Last week, colleagues from voestalpine Track Solutions Saudi Arabia travelled to the Netherlands to uncover all the ins and outs of the 'Railpro concept'. It can be a challenge abroad to properly explain the concept, because in the Netherlands the concept is so well-known it’s considered normal. The fact that a commercial company, and not the infrastructure manager or the network operator, keeps stock and manages railway materials for projects as well as for the breakdown and maintenance market.

As self-evident as these things might seem here in the Netherlands, so unusual they are outside of our country borders. That the starting point is completely different can be shown by the ratio of land size vs. network size: the Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia has the same rail network as the Netherlands, about 7,000 km, but the country is 55 times larger.

24/7 Material availibility

Keeping stock without any orders and contracts to back this up, is a hard to grasp concept for many. How are you able to do that? That was the most important question of the past four days. How do you earn money and keep your customers and shareholders happy at the same time? Our experts have really dived into this matter to explain it. With complicated slides, but also by visiting our huge main warehouse and a satellite warehouse. This has allowed our colleagues to get a better idea of how we work and what the benefits are.

During the in-house training it quickly became apparent that there are big differences with other countries (and cultures) and what we deem to be normal is not always the standard elsewhere. We can still learn a lot from each other. A wonderful conclusion to wrap things up, one that also led to very rewarding discussions!