Elisa Butini is a Running Dynamic Engineer at our factory in Pistoia, Italy. Her first three years as a full-time employee at Hitachi Rail have been filled with enriching challenges and opportunities. A good team ethic, the daily drive to contribute to sustainable innovation and inspiring work, help her to grow as a professional.
Hear from Elisa as she describes her career in Engineering, the skills she deems most important for the role and interesting projects that she has played a direct hand in...
My collaboration with Hitachi Rail began during my PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of Florence. With one of the company’s factories for high-speed trains nearby in Pistoia, Hitachi's innovations naturally came into my study.
I joined Hitachi Rail as a full-time employee in 2020, as a Running Dynamic Engineer within the Simulations and Technologies team in Pistoia. I work on a range of projects, from commuter trains to metro trains. It’s so varied, which is part of the appeal to work for Hitachi Rail!
My work goes beyond engineering design, from running dynamics such as wear phenomena to running behaviour of existing materials. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to follow the testing phase for many different vehicles. It’s such a thrill to see the train cars in service, having gone through the complex process of designing them on a screen.
The skills behind my role
Part of being in the Simulations and Technologies team, are the daily design challenges. This requires us to be persevering, with good problem-solving skills and to be open to innovation. It is also essential to be able to work in a team and share knowledge with each other.
Curiosity and hunger for knowledge is also essential for a role in Engineering at Hitachi Rail - it’s a driver behind technical work. Japanese use a single word to describe this concept - “Kaizen.” It is a combination of two words “change” and "good” which together can be translated as “continuous improvement."
It is the commitment to make small improvements every day wherever we can: in personal, private, social, and professional life. Small incremental changes create an impact over time.
The PhD experience helped me develop these skills, but my work in the stimulating environment at Hitachi Rail was paramount. Thanks to the great atmosphere on-site and the company’s training opportunities, I have been able to continuously grow as a professional.
Hitachi Lumada IoT platform connects all products, systems and solutions
Climate change, decarbonisation, power consumption, digital innovation, and air pollution are all keywords that characterise the development of our society in recent years. Railway systems play an important role in a sustainable society.
At Hitachi Rail, we are innovating solutions for rail applications to answer to these new requirements, from the operator's needs to passenger’s travel experience.
Hitachi Rail is developing a line of new digital products and services called the Hitachi Lumada IoT platform. The platform allows users to connect our products, systems and solutions in order to optimise maintenance procedures, improve automated train technology and monitor vehicles running behaviour.
I think in the future mechanical and digital design will be increasingly interconnected. It is important to invest in digitalisation because it will provide fundamental support for our design activities, especially for running dynamics.
My role in design for metro trains for Washington County
One of the most interesting and challenging projects I have worked on was for the metro trains for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). US standards and customer requirements are different from those in Europe and in some respects, they are more challenging. For example, recently there has been an increasing demand for validation with experimental data of the models we usually build for our analysis.
This is usually one of the most challenging tasks for a Running Dynamic Engineer.
The soul of my team matches Hitachi Rail’s values
The dynamic within my team can be described with the core values of Hitachi Rail. Harmony, Sincerity and Pioneering Spirit - reciprocal respect, cooperation, the sharing of ideas and the constant search for the best solution are the cornerstones that enable the team to work in harmony and achieve ever higher goals.
All of this is possible thanks to the constant work and support of our supervisors who are committed to creating and maintaining the best working environment.
