A tailored IoT solution resulting from close collaboration.

Facts & Figures

August 2020

Company Facts:

Company: Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group

Industry: Railway engineering

Number of employees: Approx. 2,100

Project Facts:

Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT boosts construction processes

Rhomberg Sersa Rail Group is a leading international full-service railway engineering provider. It harnesses innovation to optimise its processes, using an IoT solution from Swisscom and Microsoft to collect, analyse and evaluate positional and operating data from its equipment.

The challenge: create a database to simulate construction workflows

The time frames for maintaining and working on the railway infrastructure are narrow and often during the night. Carrying out this work efficiently requires meticulous planning covering all eventualities.

“To do this successfully, we are reliant on a comprehensive database,” says Christian Schollenberger, Global Head of IT at Rhomberg Sersa. “We need to know where different pieces of machinery can be deployed, their motion patterns and their power.” This means that machines and trains need to be able to “talk”. The company was looking for a partner for the entire IoT solution, encompassing data processing, device management, connectivity and data analytics.

An end-to-end IoT solution

The company needed a tailor-made solution. Christian Schollenberger, his crew and Swisscom’s IoT specialists focused on the demanding challenges faced in this specific use case. The outcome was the end-to-end IoT solution they had envisaged. “The sensor data is transferred to our Azure IoT Hub via Swisscom,” says Christian Schollenberger, explaining the process. “The data is processed, analysed, enhanced and entered into a database and then visualised.”

The insights gained enable faster, more cost-effective workflows in several different countries. A vision for the future: “We would like to be able to simulate the entire construction workflow in advance!”