Discrete event simulation applied to a reengineering problem in a railway context

Excessive urbanization and a decrease of urban condition of life, connected with pollution and traffic, have recently brought attention on the role of the country yard. Therefore, an analysis of the conditions of the connections between cities and countries has become more and more important. In the case treated in this paper, the railway connection between the city and its country yard was built to answer the need for mobility of the early 30th's so that a deep reengineering process was necessary. The business reasons for making such changes included poor financial performance, external competition together with emerging market opportunities. The redesign of the process, as well as the re-definition of the role of the associated systems and organizational structures, propose to achieve a sensible improvement in business performance. A simulation model in Arena was developed as an aid to the decision making phase. The paper proposes Discrete Event Simulation in order to identify and test the proposed new Business Process Model for the Railway Company.