EUROPE: A digital tool which aims to streamline the freight locomotive leasing business by matching operators’ demand with leasing companies’ availability has gone live.
Resource Sharing Broker aims to increase the efficiency of short and medium-term locomotive leasing, which the developers said is often characterised by slow processes and complex communications.
RSB is now live as a minimum viable product, available to interested users free of charge. It will initially focus on the German-speaking region, although is available in both German and English and users from neighbouring countries will also be able to access it.
A minimum marketable product is scheduled to be released in May 2025, with features for negotiation, communication, contract conclusion, handover/return and invoicing.
Further refinement and the introduction of additional features will be rolled out up to the prototype stage in February 2026.
RSB has been developed by technology scale-up Rail-Flow, logistics research organisation Fraunhofer IML and BELog which is responsible for the Schwenk building materials group’s rail logistics. The two-year project is backed with €1·86m from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Digital & Transport.
