På rätt spår: återkoppling för lärande i kontrollrumsmiljö - En fallstudie på en svensk järnvägsoperatör

Organisational learning is assumed to be a part of creating improved work processes in an organisation. This type of learning can be difficult to achieve in operational and reactive work environments. Challenges in observable causality, time constraints and complex external conditions means that the operational control room is one of those reactive work environments. There is a need for a system that can improve organisational learning in the challenging environment of the operational control room. The system must create conditions for feedback and evaluation in the operational control room in order to succeed. In this study a manual is created and applied to generate a feedback system, which responds to the control room’s needs. The manual is designed to address the specific conditions that apply in a generic control room. The study was divided into two parts; the first part consisted of a literature review of organizational learning, evaluation and feedback. This was combined with a field study of various control rooms. Knowledge gained from the literature review and the field study was combined to create the manual. Part two of the study consisted of a evaluation of the developed manual on a case company in the Swedish railway industry. An analysis of the case study led to an improved version of the manual. This approach generated both tangible and academic results. The tangible result is a feedback system created using the manual on the case company. The academic results are a new combination the research topic organizational learning and the empirical field of operational control rooms. These have provided a greater understanding of the challenges related to learning that is in operational control room. The authors believe that the manual can be used to develop organisational learning in control rooms in the future.A long term solution to the Swedish railway problem A new learning tool for control room staff has been developed at Lund University. It was tested on a Swedish railway company and can provide a long term improvement of control rooms worldwide. It is well known that the Swedish railway is facing big challenges. The trains are often delayed due to different kinds of disturbances. The headline: “Train Chaos!” is often occurring in Swedish press. The problems arise due to the increased number of travellers and poor maintenance of the railroads and infrastructure. This, together with frequent winter storms that collapse the railroad system, has led to a decreased confidence in railway as mean for transportation. According to statistics gathered by one of the biggest train companies in Sweden, only 20 % of the delays are caused by train breakdowns and 75 % is caused by broken railway. Delays caused by weather can account for about 5 %. Nevertheless, it is the railway company’s responsibility to ensure that travellers reach their destinations and are taken care of when a delay occur. This can be a complex task, as passengers hop on and off on different stations. Moreover, some passengers may have connections to other destinations which can be easily broken with a delay. To be able to take care of the passengers of delayed trains the train companies set up so called control rooms. The employees of the control room keeps track of the different trains and their passengers. Similar kinds of unpredictable problems arise in other types of control rooms. These kinds of working environments can be found at airports, nuclear power plants and big process plants. All of them are monitoring an unpredictable system and try to minimize the damage if anything goes wrong. It is hard to prepare for and learn from this kind of reactive environment. The authors were surprised to discover that people working in control rooms rarely know when they have done a good job and handled the situation in a good way. In order to solve this problem a guide to creating a better learning environment in control rooms was made. The guide is based on current research on learning and feedback. The guide was successfully used by a Swedish railway company. The authors believe that the guide could, if used wisely, provide a long term improvement of control rooms worldwide