The overall objective of this innovation project is to improve the safety, reliability, and availability of rolling stock through efficient processes. The focus is on significantly reducing the TurnAround Time (TaT), i.e. the time between a wagon being removed and reintegrated into the transport process. Reducing this TaT will make a significant contribution to improving the operational efficiency of rail freight supply chains.
"Forward-looking and predictive maintenance are key to noticeably improve the performance of rolling stock. We are excited to bring our practical perspective to the new and unique Maintenance 4.0 collaboration project. Together we will develop strong solutions that will tangibly strengthen the sector," says Peter Reinshagen, Managing Director ERMEWA SA and Olivier Piana, Chief Technical Officer, who is leading the project for ERMEWA SA.
The collaborative approach to maintenance between industry practitioners and academics isn't quite common. In this case, the partners involved will bring together knowledge and experience from practice and academic research in jointly defined work packages. They cover topics such as energy management, data acquisition, definition and testing of wear models, failure scenarios, and testing.
“Deploying condition-based and predictive maintenance will lead us to better planning of the maintenance operations to be performed. This new maintenance organization, as opposed to traditional preventive or curative maintenance, will certainly lead us to better prepare our workshops in drawing up their workload plans; it will also lead to an increase in the proportion of mobile maintenance operations through better anticipation, making the accuracy of operations more effective”, underlines Julien Mathiaud, Managing Director INVEHO.
The project will make an important contribution to improving the efficiency of rail freight transport. It is therefore perfectly in line with the sector's objectives in Europe: to double the share of rail freight transport to 30 percent by 2030. The climate targets of the European Green Deal cannot be achieved without this shift to rail.
"Railenium is proud to carry out this ambitious innovation project in collaboration with Ermewa and Inveho. This project will enable Railenium to provide solutions to the professions and to everyday users. To do so, we will have to identify and better understand the laws of wear and tear of freight wagons and their main components, relying in particular on our expertise in energy management as well as in data mining and artificial intelligence. These skills are a core factor to improve the performance, safety, and reliability of freight wagons by developing condition-based maintenance and predictive maintenance”, states Bertrand Minary, CEO IRT Railenium.
