Philipp Hungerländer from HEX won with his project that uses artificial intelligence in rail logistics.
With more than 113 million tons of goods transported per year and more than 1400 journeys per day, locomotive scheduling, i.e. the assignment of locomotives to trains, is extremely complex and time-consuming in Austria. But Philipp Hungerländer from Hex GmbH from Klagenfurt did not shrink back to tackle this challenge. Since 2018 his team has been developing software solutions for Rail Cargo Austria based on mathematical optimization models and algorithms. Locomotive runs in rail traffic can be carried out up to ten percent more resource-efficiently compared to partially automated planning, which brings not only ecological, but also economic and social advantages.
Carinthian know-how of the SIC – Convinced
Idle times and empty runs of locomotives are minimized. By digitizing and automating planning processes, on the one hand their quality can be increased, on the other hand the planning time can be reduced from several days to less than a minute. That convinced the jury at the State Consulting Award 2020: The top-class award was given to the Carinthian on a TV broadcast on Puls4 and one of the local “hidden champions” was brought to the curtain across Austria. “It is a great honor for our highly qualified team and an enormous motivation for the future,” said Hungerländer about the victory. Such awards are important for Carinthia as a location for innovation in terms of economic performance, the attractiveness of the location and talent acquisition.
Three out of Six – national award nominees, three of them are from the SIC!
The following Carinthian companies were nominated for the State Consulting Prize:
- IoT40 Systems GmbH with their project „Bee-O-Meter“ for Hutchison Drei Austria GmbH | ZTE Austria GmbH
- trinitec IT Solutions & Consulting GmbH with the project „FLEXIFF“ for flex Althofen
- Hex GmbH with „hex.ai“ for Rail Cargo Austria AG.
The State Consulting Prize is awarded every two years by the Federal Ministry for Digitization and Business Location. The three best placed in each category as well as all state winning projects of the Constantinus Award, Austria’s major consulting, accounting and IT prize, are invited to participate. The jury will nominate the six most outstanding projects, where one of them will be chosen as the winner.
“We are proud of our top companies from the SIC community – the awards are a visible sign of the quality of the domestic IT scene”, said SIC Chairman Marc Gfrerer happily.
