Work Perfect

The day we strive for  

Moshe Berger

Head of Industrial Engineering Departments, Planning & Technology Division
Egged Ltd.
Air Port City, Israel

Egged Cooperative, established in 1933, is the largest transportation operator in Israel. Egged operates about 55 percent of the bus public transportation services and serves 900,000 daily city and intercity passengers in 25,267 daily line trips. The operation infrastructure includes about 3,000 buses in 30 branches, supported by 28 garages, warehouses and a unique plan for overhauling all kinds of bus parts.

As the head of the industrial engineering departments for maintenance and transportation, I’m responsible for all IE aspects such as work procedures, human resources standardization, incentive systems, information systems definition, equipment resources definition,  functional requirements for facilities planning, inventory methods and creating efficiency improvement plans.

The IE unit serves all the operation, maintenance and transportation units. During the last decade Egged expanded its presence into Eastern Europe, where it owns and operates more than 1,500 buses. In the last year, an additional 230 new buses began operating near Amsterdam. The IE unit also supports the European activity.

The tendency to demand a greater volume of transportation leads to lots of changes the world over, and Israel is no different. Changes include new rules and regulations, implementing modern mass transportation systems such as rapid bus transit and light rail transit, adopting new environmental standards to reduce pollution and emission rates, and often introducing innovative, intelligent transport systems technologies. I gain a lot of satisfaction from projects that improve both efficiency and passenger satisfaction.

An excellent day is when an assimilated project enables lower costs at the same quality as before, or alternately improves the quality at the previous costs. My perfect day is when I achieve both at the same time. 

– Interview by David Brandt 

David Brandt is the Web managing editor for IIE.