Let's travel by train more often!
Sometimes it happens that alumni Applied Mathematics meet within a company. This also happened to Femke Woudstra and Sjoerd Gallmann. Both work at NS Stations, Femke is Director Station Management & Operations and Sjoerd is Manager Services Innovation & Support. Very different jobs, but both are aimed at providing the passenger with a good station experience and making the journey from door to door as easy as possible. They graduated in different periods (Femke in 1998 and Sjoerd in 2003), never got to know each other during their student life, but now appear to be colleagues within the same company.
THE SIMILARITIES
Despite the fact that Femke and Sjoerd were not fellow students, I was able to find some similarities. They are still very happy with their choice of programme from back then: Applied Mathematics. Both did a minor in which they followed several electives from the programme Business Administration. And when they graduated, they thought it was time to go out into the world and look for a great job. Student life was said goodbye and business was approached with great enthusiasm. Period as a student may have passed, but they still maintain the friendships they gained during their programmes.
What did you pick up from your programme?
Femke: "I can't say that I'm still using a lot of mathematics in my current job. However, the way of thinking that I learned from my mathematics programme still helps me every day in my work. Through the teaching methods I have learned to work in a structured way and to find solutions, to think logically and to be able to quickly draw conclusions from data. As an applied mathematician you are broadly deployable. In case of problems you often quickly see what is going on, what the cause and consequence of a problem is and how you can come to a solution. And you are not easily frightened by a complicated subject, because you know that if you immerse yourself in it, you can make a lot your own". Sjoerd agrees and adds: "In my role as manager of various innovative projects, I have to deal with colleagues from different disciplines, such as Computer Science and Business Information Technology. They deal with IT, so that it has disappeared from my job. All the innovations we work on have a strong IT component. By working closely with them, I still have to deal with them and I immediately understand where they want to go with their ideas and models".
What does the job of Station Management & Operations Director at NS entails?
Femke: "Very briefly, you could say that I am responsible for the daily operations at all stations in the Netherlands. Think about the fact that the stations are clean, intact and safe, that there is a good range of shops at the station and that there are good facilities at the station such as bicycle sheds, public transport bicycles, toilets, water taps and cosy waiting rooms. Everything to ensure that passengers can have a pleasant stay and feel safe at our stations". Of course Femke doesn't do this alone, her department consists of about 300 employees. In addition, her department cooperates with various external partners, who, for example, supply the cleaning staff and the staff in the bicycle sheds.
Femke: "We are of course a company with a profit motive, but at the same time we also have a social responsibility. We want passengers to feel safe, to be able to find the right facilities at the station and to be able to catch their train on time. That's why it's important that public transport is well connected and that passengers who come to the station by bike or car can park easily, so that they can continue their journey by train. Cooperating in organizing - in a structured way - how we can do things a little better for the passengers at the stations, how we introduce innovations, besides working with so many nice colleagues, makes my job very interesting".
What does a Manager Services Innovation & Support do?
Sjoerd: "As my job says, I am mainly concerned with the innovation of services at the station. I am responsible for initiating and implementing these innovations. We often wonder how we can make things easier for passengers. Of course I don't do this alone, I'm the manager of several project groups, so-called product teams, where we investigate how we can best serve the car driver and challenge him to continue his journey by train, how we can make the toilets at the stations more easily accessible, come up with innovations for luggage lockers and how we can get the cyclist to park their bike faster and finally how we can make the rental process of a public transport bike easier and more self-service. These are very interesting projects and we often come up with very nice and smart innovations, such as a new check-in and check-out zone with which you can easily check in and out your bicycle. Our ambition is very high, we want our stations to be world class and with our smart innovations we are sure we are succeeding in that".
NS Bicycle InnovationLab
Sjoerd works with several of his project groups under the umbrella of the NS Bicycle Innovation Lab. In the ever busier inner cities the bicycle is gaining more and more ground. In the Netherlands it is even the most important means of transport among rail passengers. "That is why the public transport bike is of great importance to NS passengers", says Sjoerd. "In order to support and accelerate growth we want to make cycling to and from the station easier. Together with many colleagues from many different backgrounds, we are working in a multidisciplinary team to improve door-to-door travel so that more passengers choose the train. By developing smart innovations, piloting them and implementing them in the country, we ensure that our passengers' journey becomes better and more pleasant. And by making more use of public transport and the bicycle, we also reduce traffic jams, which in turn is good for the environment. At a number of NS Stations we are testing various innovations together with passengers in daily practice in bicycle parking facilities. This project is called NS Bicycle InnovationLab. We are testing whether it works just as well in practice as we came up with on the drawing board. We are also testing how we can optimize payment times by developing a new check-in and check-out zone: you check in and out with your public transport chip card at a gate or at the check-in and check-out pillars. The costs of parking your bike is automatically debited from your account or you pay contactless with your debit card. We may even be able to place tags on bicycles that allow check-in and check-out to take place automatically. Enough challenges to test out and implement!
Conclusion
If you graduated in Applied Mathematics, have made a number of job switches, chances are that you are not directly involved in mathematics anymore. Indirectly, perhaps because you work together in a multidisciplinary team, such as Sjoerd. But if you end up in a position like Femke's, you will probably see algorithms, mathematical formulas or -models less frequently. But is that so bad? Apparently not, because you learn a lot more than mathematics alone. You can see through and pick up problems quickly and well, working together with a multidisciplinary team is easy, structuring and organizing is a piece of cake for you, and... you can be deployed in a lot of areas. Sjoerd and Femke: "Would we recommend the programme Applied Mathematics to future students? Yes, we would!"