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Rapport d’activité assemblé 2016 VF

Every second year, Innotrans is a major event for railway business. Fer de France is aware to reinforce the attractiveness of french innovative SME

Like in 2014, France was the second largest country in Innotrans. the French Railway Sector was unified and customer oriented, and wanted to make visible its innovation spirit and its industrial power. 100 companies were hosted by three huge french pavilions. In addition, 100 other companies had their own showroom.

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The 2016 edition was the first one reinforced by a new event on the main French Pavilion. Fer de France, BusinessFrance and FIF (French railway manufacturers organisation) had decided to organise the first French Awards Ceremony. The purpose of such event was to highlight several french SMEs for their efforts in different fields : innovation, export, Customer-Supplier relationship.

Numerous companies have decided to compete for this first edition of French railways awards. Having choosen among them a shortlist of 9 companies, the evaluation commitee led by Gérard Glas (Chairman of British Steel-France) announced the names of the 3 winners.

The brilliant awards ceremony has taken place in Berlin, September 20th , honoured by the Ambassador of the French Republic in Germany, and gathered a lot of companies on the French pavilion 11.2 (one among the 3 pavilions organised by BusinessFrance and Fer de France in Innotrans)

AWARD FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT was delivered to CIM, by Philippe Etienne, Ambassador of France.  This award underlines the CIM’s international action and development on worldwide emerging markets for maintenance and railways support. CIM is evolving support, assitance, methods and tools for railways actors, even in non-easy areas. The largest part of its turnover is realised outside of France.

• Other companies in shortlist for this award : MBD Design and Atherm

AWARD FOR INNOVATION was attributed to RUSTIN by Jean-Pierre Audoux (FIF). This award recognised the high value of a new product evolved by the company : a new rubber band for Rolling Stock doors including coloured LEDs. This combination offers new fonctionnalities giving information by changing the colour of the rubber when the door is open, closed, alarmed or defective. The fan of possibilities is very wide, in particular to help disabled people by increasing their safety and accessibility. This is for all passengers a way to offer a lighting ambiance on board more comfortable and attractive.

• Other companies in shortlist for this award : Mersen and VisionSystems

AWARD FOR EXTENDED ENTERPRISE was given to FLEXELEC by Alain Bullot (Fer de France). The evaluation commitee wanted to underline the very “proactive” attitude of Flexelec in order to create from the beginning a positive relationship with their customers :  customer’s need understanding, proposals to make the best answer, risks sharing, and no-failure realisation to save money, even for complicated requirements and difficult products. The comitee was impressed by this positive way to cooperate, creating value for the customer-provider process and enhancing the willingness to cooperate further.

• Other companies in shortlist for this award : SEG and LAF

Photos Pierre Rouchaléou for Business France

Its board is pleased to announce the birth of WeFer,

which occurred 30^th June 2016, acted by the registration of the statutes at the Préfecture de Paris.

Who is WeFer ?

The association gathers former members of the Moisson-Desroches Cursus of Fer de France, which is an inter-professional cursus to train young leaders of the french rail sector (operation, industry, public authority, engineering, etc.).

Why WeFer ?

The association aims first at keeping and creating links between these members, to enforce the coordination between stakeholders and to stimulate actions in a united, global and innovative rail world.

WeFer wants to think out of the box and contribute to the thoughts around the evolution of the rail: will it be a think tank, a lobby ? The future will tell us.

How WeFer ?

We will season WeFer by a dose of humor and a pinch of off the beaten path vision to keep it on the right track and to make serious propositions without taking ourselves seriously.

Contact WeFer

Treasurer : Florence Laizier, florence.laizier@ratp.fr

Secretary : Alexandre Magny, alexandre.magny@gart.org

President : Didier Caramello, didier.caramello@sncf.fr

AFTER THE GREAT success of the Morning Debates of Fer de France at COP 21

Fer de France IS PLEASED to put on-line the bilingual versions of best moments of the debates (in English, with french subtitles)

In doing so, Fer de France wishes to promote the need for pro-active decisions:

• To obtain a real and significant modal shift, politically supported by strong economic signals
• To encourage clean electric and space saving transports. This is essential to reach the defined targets for energy transition and climatic control
• To accelerate the development of public transport networks in the biggest cities in the world. It appears that the economic model is reinforced by the expenses avoided by a more efficient transportation network and by the growing attractiveness and competitiveness of territories. The examples given by the international guests show a clear perspective in this field.
• To speed up  the efforts for innovation made by the railway sector, in order to make sure that the rail fully plays its role in connected and individual mobility.

“Railway as a backbone for sustainable and intermodal mobility”. 

Such is the vision carried and deployed by the French actors of the railway sector. The Morning Debates have been a good opportunity to launch a debate between the vision of high-level international personalities from the civil society and the effort made by key French actors of the railway sector, in France and in the world.

Watch the bilingual videos on our website :  www.ferdefrance.fr

Find the bilingual videos on:

The first graduates of the Moisson Desroches cursus (high level training cursus managed by Fer de France- see website) have recently presented 3 final reports, finalizing their studies about the french railway industry context.

See photo : the members group with Nicolas Jachiet Chairman and CEO of EGIS, President of Fer de France

Topic 1 : value cartography. How and where is the value created in the French railway sector ? What are the key figures ?

Study managed by:

• Nicolas Brossier : Rolling stock manager Eurotunnel
• Jerome Kazmierczak : deputy human ressources division, SNCF Réseau.
• David Herrgott : Consultant, former deputy head manager at Fer de France
• Younes Ouguerzi : IT system director VFLI (UTP)

Thème B : disruptions and evolutions : wich are the coming evolutions modifying the economic model for railways ? Wich are the ways to anticipate and to implement new technologies and disruptive approches to make the railway system able to survive ?

Study managed by :

• Jimmy Brun : manager of the railway office MEDDE
• Didier Caramello : project manager SNCF gares et connexion
• Emmanuel Bois : director business developpement for PTAs and public sector Alstom
• Frédéric Cyr : General manager of Rhône Express Transdev (UTP)

Topic C : Lean and competitiveness. How lean and low-cost approaches could help to develop railway sector? Are the actors ready to evolve into this way? Is it possible to increase the lean spirit within the French railway sector while keeping a large and positive ambition for mobility developpement ?

Study managed by :

• Florence Laizier : general manager of the line 1 of Paris metro RATP
• Alexandre Magny : general secretary of GART
• Florence Datcharry-Sirven : director of SNCF university
• Antoine Goga : Director for railway sector Arcadis (Syntec)

download the reports (in french)

cycle MD 2016 – Cartogaphie de valeur dans la filière

cycle MD 2015 – Anticiper les ruptures VF

cycle MD 2015 – Apprendre du frugal

IRT Railenium, and Fer de France, are pleased to start a working program for Test and Strategy – Qualifications for the railway sector

In a highly competitive international environment, the French rail sector has everything to gain by finding new ways of qualifications and providing evidence of compliance which meet at once to objective performance and speed while keeping guarantees security equivalent or optimized.

This working program is an opportunity to widen this central issue for the railway sector: the validation and testing phases of innovation.

The first general meeting of the sector’s experts will take place in Paris march 23th . The objectives are to prepare, initially, the inventory methods of qualification and registration in regards of
• to the rail experience feedback and aerospace;
• expression of needs in terms of qualification for the rail sector;
• presentation of how to improve the existing in terms of performance and speed in compliance with safety requirements.

The experts will carry out, within three practical workshops, in-depth analysis of three functional systems considered critical vis-à-vis the validation process:
- Shunting
- The braking
- And the platforms and channels.

Furthermore, and as part of Sifer, a round table restitution of the work of the seminar

will be held on the exhibitors Forum Sifer, 26 March 12:30

Fer de France has launched “Moisson-Desroche’s”, its inter-professional cycle to train young leaders of the rail sector. The first 2015 graduating class, gathers together 12 young leaders from firms or entities at the origin of Fer de France. During a year, those trainees are going to upgrade their knowledge in order to gain a more transversal understanding of their branch.

The purpose? Training the future senior executives who are going to be able of anticipating the changes in the sector. “We hope that, at the end of the cycle, the trainees will have a more transversal view of the rail industry and also a more accurate one of the environment surrounding their company. We also hope that this training course we give them a greater sense of awareness of collective and transversal issues”explains Alain Bullot, General Manager of Fer de France. He leads this first graduating class with Guy Le Bras, General Director of the GART. 

The trainees are going to join a one-year educational program, from January to December 2015. For this first pilot graduating class, the trainees have co-constructed the program. The cycle is formed of 4 program components :

• 10 to 12 days based on the key challenges of the rail industry. Each working day will be organized by one of the entities of Fer de France and built around its own difficulties inside the branch,
• Writing a report,
• Participating to events,
• And a study tour.

Each working day will include conferences, visits and meetings with top executives. It will be enhanced by a moment with the President of the hosting firm. 

The reports will be written by groups of 4 trainees. “We will make them work on themes of direct interest for Fer de France, explains Alain Bullot. “We hope that their authorized input will allow us to formulate recommendations for the rail sector”.  3 themes have been selected : 1-A mapping of value creation for the sector. 2-How to anticipate the emerging innovations, showing a break-away from the traditional business models? and 3-Can being frugal be a level of performance? Or intelligence servicing the ‘just necessary’ model.

A component of the cycle is dedicated to joining events: symposiums, presentations and displays, trade fairs…The themes are as various as the city of the Future, the role of the State, e-Economy in the aircraft industry or the effect of car-sharing…”We want to broaden their view of their sector, to make them think about topics that are not a central concern in their business activities, but still are crucial for our future” underlines Alain Bullot. “Just one key thread: the future and performance of the sector”.

Finally, the cycle includes a one week study tour. For the first year, the participants will go to Great-Britain to observe and benchmark the British railway system. As a consequence, this first graduating class will be called “London”.

This high-level inter-professional cycle  has been called “Moisson-Desroches”, the name of this French engineer born in 1785, who understood – before any others – the strategic interest of the railways. As early as 1814, he sent a report on this topic to Napoleon 1^st. Even if no one listened to Pierre-Michel Moisson-Desroches at the time, his report inspired, 25 years later, the main lines structuring the actual French network. By choosing to give his name to this cycle, the trainees are showing their ambitions… Alain Bullot and Guy Le Bras are already thinking about launching a second class as soon as 2016 with 20-25 trainees: “We could achieve the quick training of a hundred leaders. We are convinced that this cycle is going to be very positive for the entire French railway sector”

Since 2008, the main players in the French and European aeronautical industry, becoming aware, over and above their competition, of a common destiny faced with international competition, have created BoostAeroSpace, a collaborative platform with the aim of dematerialising the exchanges between customers, package builders, equipment manufacturers and SMEs.

To begin with, this platform covers the supply chain process, project collaboration and concurrent engineering. The aeronautical industry considers that this is a factor ensuring collective competiveness and solidarity between the majors and the SMEs.

Can this procedure be “cloned” to the railway industry? What are the challenges and the keys to success? What can hold it back?

Debate and exchanges with Pierre Faure, Founder and first Chairman of BoostAeroSpace, the common governance structure for this programme.

On giving the go-ahead for this approach in 2008, the efficiency and competitiveness targets of the chairmen of the principle aeronautical majors were to improve fluidity of exchanges and the reliability of the supply chain, organise collaboration between players and between concurrent sites from the design and industrialisation phases.

Thus, the idea to standardise the processes, the essential data and the collaboration tools was born to make exchanges between information systems possible, reduce non-qualities and shorten the deadlines. This way of working leads to better traceability of decisions and opens up the field to better management of the data required for the life cycle (maintenance and configuration) which is better prepared and more efficient.

Solidarity in the activity line comes out as the winner: this approach allowed the Tier 1 and 2 suppliers to begin to simplify the complexity which resulted from the use of different and heterogeneous tools depending on the principals, and the use of the same tools with their suppliers thus ensuring a “digital continuity” for the principals in the SMEs.

Developed in “light” mode and therefore only slightly intrusive into the partners’ systems, this basic collaboration has been deployed over the last 3 years and in the long term will affect the complete aeronautical supply chain. Today, more than 2,000 enterprises (principals, Tier 1 and 2 suppliers) already use the platform.

What are the challenges? What are the concrete results? Can this approach be used as a basis or cloned for the railway industry? Pierre Faure, Founder and first Chairman of BoostAeroSpace, in charge of this programme, will discuss this subject with the heads of the railway industry at the SIFER show on 26 March.

FER DE FRANCE in partnership with BUSINESS FRANCE, the French Agency for International Business Development, will attend SIFER exhibition. Please come and get information on dynamic railway markets such as South Africa’s (and its neighbouring countries) and India’s. Following the seminar, meet with BUSINESS FRANCE’s railway experts posted in these countries, who will be travelling to France especially for the exhibition.

For further information please contact

• David BEAUDLET / Tél : +33(0)1 40 73 36 48/ david.beaudlet@businessfrance.fr
• Caroline LETRANGE / Tél : +33(0)1 40 73 32 87 / caroline.letrange@businessfrance.fr