EUROMAIN - European Railway Open Maintenance System
Overview
Background & policy context:
It is widely believed that railways represent the only transport mode which can significantly contribute in the next years to solve the increasingly difficult mobility and congestion problems in the European transportation system, as roads and airways approach saturation and cause damaging environmental effects.
The continued growth in transport demand puts in evidence the existing problems of Europe's transport system and forces authorities to adopt precise and robust action plans to get real improvements in a reasonable period of time. The White Paper "European transport policy for 2010: time to decide" identifies "revitalising the railways" as one of the main objectives, to be achieved first of all opening up the markets, pushing for further harmonisation in the fields of interoperability and safety, improving railways credibility, in terms of regularity and punctuality, and completing the envisaged trans-European Network.
To effectively address such objectives and support its strategic role, the railway system needs to improve all parts of its organisation, removing bottlenecks and taking advantage of new technologies: an important factor is the maintenance activity, and its impact on system performances, costs, quality of service and openness. While initiatives to improve maintenance exist from single railway operators, only a concerted action at continental level can give a common standard vision covering all aspects in this field.
Objectives:
The EuRoMain project intended to fully define and specify a complete maintenance support system for railways, which will allow to remotely monitor and diagnose complex systems aboard trains and inside fixed plants, automatically link real-time data with suitable technical documentation, retrieving it in standard format from a distributed database, and ubiquitously present the appropriate information to final Users, by means of a complete set of tools. The project envisaged the development and validation of prototype hardware and software modules, integrating them within the communication infrastructure developed by the TrainCom project (IST-1999-20096).
The results would include proposals for new standards, allowing interoperability between different countries, systems and operators, and paving the way for a new maintenance organisation in Europe.
More specifically, the objectives of the EUROMAIN project were:
- To support and monitor maintenance activities remotely;
- To improve system availability and reliability, therefore reducing failures and related delays;
- To reduce maintenance down time and related costs;
- To simplify and harmonise the maintenance procedures at European level;
- To optimise long-term maintenance planning;
- To reduce life cycle cost of equipment;
- To improve cooperation and document exchange between involved actors;
- To manage and monitor vehicle fleets and plant families;
- To promote interoperability of maintenance tools;
- To contribute to the establishment of a trans-European railway network;
- To open the market to new stake holders, including SME's.
Methodology:
To achieve its objectives, the project has been divided into the following three Activity Fields:
1. European Diagnostic Data Network (EDDN)
The main objective of this activity field is to define standards for systems breakdown and data exchange. The aim of the diagnostic data network is to give immediate diagnostic information to ground systems, so that operators can know the status of each device and the maintenance workshop can plan in advance the resources for maintenance operations.
2. European Technical Documentation Network (ETDN)
This activity field aims to define standards for technical documentation, making it available wherever needed. Documentation is a primary resource for maintenance. New computer and web technologies can greatly improve the benefits and usability of technical documents. The development of standards for the structure of the document types that constitute maintenance documentation (manuals, maintenance procedures, troubleshooting procedures, preventive maintenance programs), and the use of the standard language XML will allow to:
- Easily retrieve information thanks to a standard structure and newer technologies capabilities;
- Always access updated documents;
- Obtain well built manuals;
- Have access to information anywhere.
3. Logistic Application Standardization and Interoperability (LASI)
This activity field groups specific maintenance applications and tools. New and more powerful maintenance tools can be produced by means of the developed technologies. Specifications for such applications and basic modules will be developed as follows:
- Configuration management: aims at keeping an updated database of each item installed on a vehicle. This kind of information is needed to plan preventive and corrective maintenance operations. For each vehicle, the system shows, on a computer connected to the ground network, a functional or a physical breakdown of all items, down to replaceable unit level. If an item is replaced in a maintenance operation, it is possible to update the configuration from a computer connected to the ground network.
- Maintenance Management Systems: allows to plan, monitor and optimise maintenance activities, so that a high level of technical reliability and safety can be maintained. To achieve this, data coming from vehicles and fixe
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