Workload Study for a Critical Railway Supervisory Function

On behalf of a large metro operator, we designed a time-and-motion study using statistical sampling methodologies to determine the typical residual workload of certain field supervisors whose primary train dispatching function had been “remoted” to a centralized control center.  To properly understand their workflow, we met with control center managers and reviewed their operating rules to understand their function.  We also met with supervisor representatives at their work locations to ensure we capture all of the exception tasks they perform on a day-to-day basis, and factored these unusual circumstances into our study design.  A team of operations managers then performed field observations on a 24/7 basis over the course of two months based on our statistical sample.  Our study showed that the field supervisors, although they were actively utilized only around 30% of the time, on average several times each shift, they perform a task that could not reasonably have been performed by the train crew, which would otherwise have required a roving supervisor to be sent from another location.  We also found that they fulfilled an important safety function by determining fitness-for-duty at train crew signing-on points.  As a result of our study, the operations management proactively identified 40 existing messenger positions, whose function could be replaced with internal mail service, which resulted in equivalent headcount reductions.