Overview
Railways are large linear assets of electrical and mechanical subsystems. Consequently the infrastructure managers (IMs) are extensive with many stakeholders involved. The railway infrastructure and the IMs consist of technical and organisational levels: system, subsystem and component levels, and strategic, tactical and operational levels, respectively. Therefore performance measurement systems for rail infrastructure need to integrate both the technical and organisational perspectives, vertically and laterally. It involves several objectives, hundreds of parameters and indicators, data collection, and aggregation of information.
The purpose of the project is to develop a link and effect model for improving performance measurement systems that integrates both the technical and organisational perspectives, vertically and laterally. Therefore, thorough analysis is required for developing an effective performance measurement system.
More specifically, the objectives of this research are:
- To map operation and maintenance activities of railway infrastructure assets
- To develop key values and monitoring methods for RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety) and LCC (life cycle costing) in maintenance infrastructure contracts
- To develop similar methods and tools for the exchange of key data among stakeholders involved in the railway system, i.e. infrastructure managers, traffic companies, supplier, contractor, etc.
- To develop a link and effect model to measure and monitor changes that affect the operation of the assets
Following steps will be done during the project:
- Literature studies, interviews and real life experiences for process mapping of rail infrastructure
- Factors identification for asset management and its policy as input for the model
- Identification of key performance indicators (KPIs) and key result areas (KRAs) for desired policy modifications and improvements
- Application of the link and effect model for results demonstration and verification as a pilot case study
Funding
Results
The project worked out following results:
- A link and effect model for performance improvement of rail infrastructure was developed. It provided a continuous methodology for breaking down objectives into operational requirements and linking them to results, using performance indicators, and algorithms for data analysis and simulation, for decision support.
- Maintenance performance indicators for railway infrastructure were identified. Similar indicators were considered as one indicator. Some indicators were added, since they were considered as general ones, e.g. maintenance personnel absenteeism. These indicators form a basis for constructing a maintenance performance measurement system (MPM-system) for railway infrastructure. The identified indicators have been compared to EN 15341. It was found that 13 indicators are similar. A number of the indicators in the European standard are general for any maintenance functions. But, at the same time, it has to be kept in mind that the standard is mainly for manufacturing businesses and not for linear assets. Thus, some key railway indicators cannot be found in the standard.