Interview Frederic on RailFreight.com: 'Railway undertakings want to plan resources with one click'

A new RailFreight.com interview with Frederic Pscheid explores why “one-click planning” is hard, what rail operators actually need, and where digitalisation still gets stuck.

Rail freight operators are under pressure to do more with less, but one structural bottleneck keeps showing up: resource planning. In a new RailFreight.com piece, railcube’s Head of Product, Frederic Pscheid, breaks the challenge down into two themes that rarely get equal attention: optimization and synchronization.

The real meaning of “one-click planning”

“One-click” sounds like a buzzword until you look at what it actually implies in rail operations. Planning is not just a locomotive and a driver. It includes ground staff, inspectors, travel, hotels, rest times, follow-up shifts, qualifications, and constant last-minute change.

Frederic's point is pragmatic:

• Real-time updates must be immediate where operations depend on them.
• For mid and long-term planning, a short delay can be acceptable, but accuracy still matters.
  
  

Optimisation is not optional anymore

Historically, large operators could compensate with manpower. That era is over. The goal is to plan people and locomotives efficiently, ideally in “round trips” where utilization stays high and dead time stays low, even if reality will always be messy.

The uncomfortable competitor: Excel (and paper)

Many operators still rely on tools that were never built for today’s operational complexity. Excel is often the default, especially for smaller and mid-sized companies. Some control rooms still print planning sheets and update them manually.

This is why the software bar is high: it needs to be lightweight and fast but still cover operational reality.

Digitalisation is mostly a process problem

Technology is not always the main limiter. The bigger barrier is process inertia: workflows that were never designed with IT in mind and then patched into systems later.

Paper remains a stubborn constraint too: printed documents, country-specific certificates, and “digitalization” that is essentially emailing PDFs. Real progress means structured data where it’s needed, on mobile devices, including offline use where connectivity is weak.

What’s next

The interview also touches on where railcube is building toward: more mobile workflows, support for interoperability and regulatory interfaces, and a grounded view on AI, not buzzwords, but measurable workload reduction for users.