Rolling stocks are extremely maintenance consuming with their complex mechanical and electrical systems and numerous moving parts. To ensure a reliable and safe performance, railway companies have to perform regular maintenance and replace any failing pieces of equipment as early as possible. Furthermore, the railway maintenance industry is dynamic and mobile. Trains are constantly moving; maintenance centers, depots and stations are spread across the territory. Maintenance technicians need a smart, mobile, real-time and collaborative solution to keep equipment in good working order.
Railway Maintenance and CMMS Software
Mobility Work is a Next Gen maintenance management platform, combining a CMMS and a specialized social network dedicated to maintenance professionals and all the actors they need to interact with (for instance equipment or consumables manufacturers and service suppliers). Numerous Mobility Work features can be tailored to the industry in order to cover all specific railway maintenance aspects.
Realizing the power of digitization and latest industry 4.0 trends, more and more railway companies are turning to modern technologies. For example, France’s state-owned national railway company SNCF is constantly exploring and adopting new solutions in their 10 industrial technicenters. Currently the railway giant trusts Mobility Work Next Gen Maintenance Management Platform with its maintenance management and several technicenters are already using the application everyday.
To ensure the safety and reliability of equipment, regular, high-quality maintenance should become the number one priority for every railway company.
Safety and Reliability Drive the Railway Industry
A good railway maintenance management starts with a modern, next-gen CMMS, which every team member is willing to use. Mobility Work helps technicians record, track and access anytime and anywhere data and work orders. The solution is adaptable to all IoT systems. Information collected with sensors on critical parts such as brakers, wheels and engines is stored and analyzed to ensure regular predictive and preventive maintenance interventions.
According to the European Railway Agency, 30% of all railway accidents in the European Union are related to level crossings. Since in train management safety is of crucial importance, most automation trends and IoT applications are dedicated to safety and reliability. Numerous systems and sensors can reduce the risk of collisions, control speed, monitor track conditions and many more. IoT and appropriate CMMS data analysis can further improve the integration of the level crossings control, which is one of the primary systems impaction safety on railroads.
Reliability is the key to maintaining a successful railway. Mobility Work keeps track of the entire railway equipment (trains and infrastructure), to help maintenance managers eliminate failures before they become fatal.
Train Maintenance
An essential ingredient in the successful running of a railway company is the well-maintained railway stock.
Train maintenance can be carried out based on time, mileage or condition monitoring data. The time and mileage- basis methods are quite outdated mainly because they are very time consuming and not efficient enough. Following the digitization trends, condition monitoring is now by far the most reliable maintenance programme. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) and MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) are other significant measures applied to railway stock performance. It is important to consider that trains actually deteriorate rapidly in storage and produce new failures, different from the ones seen in normal service conditions.
Mobility Work application’s Big Data tool helps you make better decisions with customizable indicators.
Whatever the company culture, Mobility Work can be easily adopted for any performance measurement and to issue work orders, reports and improved schedules.
Furthermore, the Mobility Work mobile app has an integrated geolocation tool, which enormously contributes to speed up interventions performance in the field. Since the information is available to any team member, assistance can be sent immediately to the right place.
Railway Infrastructure Maintenance
Trains require a wide range of equipment and special facilities for storage and maintenance, which on their side need regular maintenance interventions as well. Some of the equipment include:
- Exterior water washing machines;
- Interior vacuum machines;
- Water, power and toilet cleaning systems;
- Drainage facilities and proper waste water management;
- Special buildings for rolling stocks inspections;
- Lifting machines;
- Maintenance workshops with miling, boring and cutting machines;
- Electronic and pneumatic testing shops;
- Traction power and signaling communications equipment.
Mobility Work streamlines the maintenance of all relevant railway equipment. The maintenance management platform eases the communication between all involved facilities and improves the entire maintenance cycle. The Next Gen Maintenance Platform can be easily integrated into every single area.
From Reactive to Predictive Maintenance
Traditionally many railway companies execute maintenance tasks in two ways: scheduled intervention for major systems and fixing minor things as doors or windows when broke down. Both approaches have big disadvantages: In the first case there is a big risk that parts are prematurely replaced and the second one can easily lead to numerous delays and unhappy customers.
Nowadays, predictive maintenance programs rely on condition monitoring data and are far more efficient that the traditional methods. Algorithms based on real-time data predict when parts are likely to fail so that they can be replaced before causing unplanned downtime. Most of the railway companies are likely to consider changing their maintenance approach and eventually completely switch to real-time monitoring.
Mobility Work can easily turn sensor data into action. The advanced analytics tool combines sensor data with machine’s history and spare parts information to deliver most accurate results.
Direct Benefits of CMMS for the Railway maintenance Industry
Mobility Work, delivers solutions to manage all types of trains and all railway systems and equipment as electrification, communications, air-conditionings and depots equipment. Thanks to its flexibility the Next Gen Maintenance Management platform can be deployed in maintenance, fleet and spare parts management, purchasing, operations and many more. As the 1st maintenance social network, Mobility Work also connects rail operators, asset owners, service providers, suppliers and maintenance technicians to facilitate their communication and improve the overall company’s performance.
- Mobility Work Is Simple and Smart
For far too long Computerized Maintenance Management Systems, especially the ones designed for the railway maintenance industry have been extremely complicated to install and adopt. Mobility Work features a bunch of elaborated functionalities and promises in the same way to be smart, simple and easy to use. The solution doesn’t require any training and the entire plant’s data entry can take less than a week.
- Mobility Work Mobile App Drives Productivity and Improves Efficiency
Mobility Work mobile application is available both for Android (on the Google Play Store) and iOS (on the Apple App Store). You can simply follow the news feed, take a picture of a piece of equipment, share with everybody in the team, issue work orders using your device’s microphone, and many more… And all this directly from your smartphone or any connected device, from anywhere at any time!
Find the main features of your CMMS on Mobility Work’s mobile version (available on iOS and Android)
- High-Quality CMMS Doesn’t Have to Cost a Lot
Only 30 Euros per maintenance technician and per month ! Your CMMS licence will provide you with an access to all the platform functionalities. No additional fees are necessary for production technicians licences, hardware or any other equipment or support!
Major improvements strategies have been undertaken during the last years in the trains and the railway maintenance infrastructure and are mainly dedicated to safety and reliability. Legacy equipment and maintenance methods are being gradually replaced by smart systems driven by real-time data based on condition monitoring.
The way to successful digitization and reaping all IoT benefits in the railway maintenance industry could start with the implementation of a modern CMMS that can store and control all sensor data and manage the lifecycle of all rail assets.
Following the 4.0 industry trends, Mobility Work introduces the concept of a Next Gen Maintenance Management Platform (CMMS, maintenance social network, maintenance market place). Mobile, user-friendly, flexible, diversified, smart and cost efficient the platform ensures the setup of best practice asset and maintenance management to run a safe and reliable rail equipment lifecycle.
