Global markets and supply customization in urban trasportation system

The increasing world’s population, mainly concentrated in urban areas, is leading to an increasing demand for transport services, which is an inescapable consequence of global trends. Indeed, evolving demographic, social and economic trends create dynamic demand for mobility by individuals, companies and governments. Developing and emerging countries manifest several needs mainly related to commuting mobility from home to work, infrastructures, production plants and machinery, housing, economies of scale and modern technologies. In these countries, passenger demand is growing due to increased separation between accommodation and work and, as a consequence, traffic in urban and metropolitan areas, as in surrounding regions, is progressively congested. On the contrary, networks and interactions between people for the creation of new knowledge characterize developed countries and the needs are referable to mobility during the working time, for shopping and for social purposes. More in general, cities, big and small, are faced by several challenges in health, mobility, social development, security, water and energy resource management, but nowadays their survival and sustainability depend more and more on a reliable and worthwhile transportation system. Indeed, especially in fast growing context, the issue of mobility and transport is the key challenge facing cities now and in future. In this context, cities represent the engine of the urban transportation systems industry and the present dissertation focuses on the response of global suppliers of rail-based solutions to increasing need of mobility. In global markets, where the time is considered a decisive factor (time-based competition) and the competitive space become broaden and dynamic (market-space management), the urban transportation systems suppliers could compete and survive only adopting a Market-Driven approach. The customization and the adaptation of the transportation systems to the requirements of several clients represent a primary challenge for global market’s suppliers, which need to organize their operations on flexibility and on non-competitive structures, such as networks, taking into account sub-suppliers, clients and even competitors. In borderless competitive arena besides Europe and United States, new markets are increasingly drawing the attention of global suppliers and in this dissertation through a field research has been examined the situation of the Saudi Arabia.