Cost reduction
Reducing the cost of running your railway
In recent years less emphasis was placed on the cost of running the railway as passenger numbers and freight volumes increased, new railways were built and legislation, from interoperability to safety, refocused attention elsewhere. However, recent global events have served to reduce the supply of finance and reverse the long term trends in passenger and freight growth.
The result is that most railway organisations are now placing renewed emphasis on cost reduction opportunities that maintain and enhance system performance. For many train operators, this means achievement of increased reliability which in turn reduces maintenance needs and has the corollary of increased fleet availability.
Lloyd’s Register has a range of railway performance improvement services whose costs are designed to be a fraction of the savings they generate:
Our system engineers work in partnership with the client to focus best-practice reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) techniques on whole systems or specific groups of components and drive through performance improvement solutions which generate substantial cost savings.
We have used our cross-sector expertise to develop a range of maintenance regimes that provide further enhancements to the well-known Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) approach. These improvements go under the name of Risk Based Maintenance & Inspection (RBMI).
Our in-house asset databases and auditing capability have enabled us to create asset condition assessment regimes for train operators and leasing companies in which data gathered on contemporary asset condition is translated into repair, maintenance and renewal decisions that ensure that minor defects and normal wear & tear are not allowed to escalate into more costly rectification activities.
We have designed a range of asset condition monitoring systems, including the award-winning GOTCHA wheel-rail measurement system. The system takes raw data on the wheel-rail interface and translates it into maintenance advice on wheelset repair. In this manner, our system has been shown to generate huge savings by ensuring that minor wheel defects do not escalate into major vehicle or infrastructure damage.
Further information can be found on the following pages:
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