From railway construction sites to artificial intelligence

For Emilia Chianella, innovation has never been just a passing fad. For over thirty years, she has led Ecoindustria, a company specialising in railway maintenance, proving that determination and expertise can break down any stereotype. Having overcome a major health challenge, she continues to look ahead with the same curiosity that led her to experiment with artificial intelligence through the Women’s Intelligence in AI project, promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale with the support of the Centre for Public Impact as part of the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund. Today, Emilia regards AI as a valuable ally for improving organisation and efficiency, but with one conviction that remains unchanged: no technology can replace people’s judgement, experience and sense of responsibility. Here is her story, as told by Onelia Onorati.

She describes herself as “a woman catapulted, thirty years ago, into a male-dominated world, who turned up at the office and on construction sites in 12-heeled shoes, defying every cliché”. Emilia Chianella, CEO of Ecoindustria, continues to maintain this drive even after battling a serious health challenge. This is a brief profile of the Umbrian entrepreneur who took part in the ‘Female Talent in AI’ project. The ‘men’s world’ she refers to is that of railway maintenance. Her company, Ecoindustria, grew out of a project launched together with her husband and today counts the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group among its clients. With its registered office in Giano dell’Umbria (Perugia) and operational units in Marcianise (Caserta), Orbassano (Turin), Verona and La Spezia, it employs around 90 people and has won numerous awards for its management performance and financial reliability. Having historically provided logistics and materials handling services, warehouse management and industrial cleaning, the company now carries out mechanical maintenance work on railway rolling stock.

“I could have devoted myself to activities considered more ‘feminine’, such as fashion, but I decided to leave a different mark and a legacy for my children, with a very hands-on business that deals with materials and metals,” she explains. “My interest in AI stems, as with many other things, from a curiosity about technological innovations. I’m used to experiencing innovation first-hand, from household appliances to cars, right through to technology that’s useful at work. I’m putting to good use what used to be a healthy competition with my son – who’s just twenty years younger than me – and is now a light-hearted rivalry with my thirteen-year-old grandson. I refuse to resign myself to being a boomer,” she jokes, “I have to tackle the transition from knobs to touchscreens!”

Her curiosity about the ‘Intelligenze al femminile’ programme stemmed from a quest for precision and efficiency, which has always led Emilia to test new developments for herself. “It was a very significant discovery, and I recommend this programme to all women, especially female entrepreneurs like myself. Today, it’s so important to know how to use AI effectively, as even those of us who haven’t done so yet will soon be integrating it into our work.

The course can help us overcome preconceptions and gain greater confidence in using the tool and monitoring its outputs. For those in management roles, it’s vital to know this! We can boost efficiency, we can be supported in decision-making processes, whilst always keeping our feet on the ground and, above all, maintaining oversight of the entire process.”

Before the training sessions, in her capacity as regional councillor for Confindustria Umbria, Emilia often heard people talking about the potential of AI: “I immediately sensed it would make a difference, even from the stories my nephew used to tell me. I realised that by then, whenever I used search engines, AI was already being used, but at first I feared it was just a passing fad. Then I felt the need to understand it better so I could explore its potential and limitations.”

An approach which, as far as Emilia’s sector is concerned, relates more to organisational processes than to the very heart of the business: “Freight wagons, just like locomotives and my entire world, revolve around highly professional mechanical maintenance carried out by qualified technicians and are based entirely on their expertise and training. At Ecoindustria, it is the human touch that determines the quality of the service”.

Then there were also concerns about passive use of the tool: “I was worried about how my staff and I might use artificial intelligence platforms, and I had the feeling that people were relying on them without checking, as if they were absolute truth. No tool can replace personal responsibility and critical thinking. The added value of AI must always be verified and can never be separated from the person, from the human being. I also raised the issue of the confidentiality of the documents that pass before my eyes. ‘Intelligenze al femminile’ helped me understand the value of artificial intelligence and the centrality of skills”.

Thanks to the training, Emilia has learnt to make the right requests, verify the information obtained, and interpret it in the correct context: “Rather than choosing the best platform, it is essential to know how to ask the right questions”. With this awareness, AI is integrated into her work in a much more structured way: it becomes a day-to-day support tool for emails, reports and documents, and for daily activity planning. It can be used as a tool for summarising input generated during meetings or in relation to feedback received from colleagues. “This allows me to free up a lot of time to devote to sensitive tasks such as customer relations.”

All that glitters is not gold: the knowledge of a company founded and run for thirty years certainly cannot be replaced by AI. There is always the risk of receiving outdated answers. “Every answer provided must be contextualised to the specific situation and fine-tuned with the help of the critical thinking and insights of my staff – from the warehouse manager to the specialist technician – who possess irreplaceable on-the-ground experience” . If we were to define it and identify a specific role, “AI is that cross-cutting technology that analyses data, optimises processes and solves many problems, but only if used well and methodically. It must always be contextualised and integrated with people’s skills”. In short, “Human in the loop”, always and in all circumstances!