The railway industry is the backbone of transportation, facilitating the movement of not only people, but also goods across vast distances. Making sure the operations run as seamlessly as possible is paramount as disruption can lead to costly delays (and possible financial losses for goods providers).
Traditional maintenance schedules often rely on fixed timetables but predictive maintenance isn’t always as simple as “one size fits all”. By following a fixed approach several issues can easily creep in: over-maintenance, unnecessary downtime or being massively over budget.
How should I plan my maintenance?
In the era of modern technology, rail business intelligence platforms like Rail BI can help you plan more efficiently.
When maintenance is due on a set portion of a route, there are several options to consider (which we discussed further in our “Investment In Assets: Should You Repair Or Replace?” article).
With a BI rail planning solution, you will have the insight to see how much upkeep is required (based on a predictive maintenance schedule) vs. the cost required to replace an asset (and connected assets required) with a newer technology – including its upkeep over a further period of time. Based on the outcome, you can then make better data-driven decisions and see which is the better option for your rail budget.
Data quality and maintenance plans
There are always concerns with data quality. When a single data source is used for all specific tasks, the accuracy is greatly increased compared to several data sources using differing information per project.
All asset data in the Rail BI platform is pulled from a central repository. When data is updated for once asset – it is updated throughout all of your current and future projects. This way, you can ensure your data is always as accurate as possible. All project estimations are also updated so you know your costs are up to date.
Predictive maintenance and Workbank planning
Workbank planning is a beneficial activity for all asset management teams and when looking at maintenance, it can also help to increase your efficiency.
A Workbank is a set of planned work (maintenance, asset renewal or upgrade). While maintenance tasks are being planned, opportunities to bundle work together (that may be scheduled for later time frames or in areas close together) and maintenance tasks can seamlessly merge into another.
If you are interested in more information on how our platform handles workbank planning, you can learn more here.
Clear and concise plans and reporting
The final piece of any puzzle is reporting. With the Rail BI business intelligence planning platform, all project plans are updated instantaneously allowing multiple options to be visualised easily.
With easier planning activities, we can reduce the time taken for estimating activities to be reduced by up to 80% – resulting in an estimated saving of 2.5% of the overall project cost. The same platform as produced over 1400 estimates to data (including all cost estimates for the UK’s Digital Railway since 2015)
Using business intelligence tools (such as our rail planning software platform) gives you the confidence to make better decisions, and enhance productivity and efficiency. We can help you get the best results and the correct information every time.
For more information about our product and to see how using business intelligence can significantly improve your planning for rail maintenance, upgrades and more, contact one of our team today for a demo of our rail planning platform.