Keeping Your Rail Cars
in Service
W
HEN AGENCIES
employ the use of
intelligent software
platforms, there is
the potential to reduce
downtime and
increase the reliability
of its rail system as
a whole.
Siemens off ers an IoT platform
that is aimed at creating a smarter,
safer and more reliable system.
Simon Davidoff , the head of Siemens
Digital Rail Services business
in the U.S., said, “We have a cloudbased
portfolio so the analytics
exist in the infrastructure and we
can access them around the world
and there is a platform, we call it
Railigent. It does three things on
a basic level. One of them is it does
monitoring the asset, the second
one, it is doing data analytics and
18 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | JULY/AUGUST 2017
develop their own soft ware analytic
programs, which Alex Shubs, director
of advanced rail technologies
group at Progress Rail, described as
a waste of time. He explained that
many problems that are faced are
faced by multiple systems.
“We at Progress Rail have
developed a predictive analytics
platform that we call PR Uptime
(Uptime). It can provide insight
across the whole rail system.”
Uptime is a suite of products
that covers locomotives, passenger
cars, crossings and tracks. Th e
main focus has been on locomotives,
but Progress Rail is looking
to branch out both nationally and
internationally.
“We have a lot of rail-specifi c
knowledge ... We basically look at
locomotive data, this is sensors
that are coming off of the locomotives.
We also look at how the
locomotives are being used in service,
how much fuel is needed and
looking at shop data as well,” explained
Shubs. “Th is is the repair
history, what has been done and
context data like ‘when’ and data
that the platform can analyze.”
Th e platform is able to take into
consideration the locomotive, as
well as the maintenance shop’s data.
“We really try and look at the
sensor data that has already been
implemented by the agency. Th e
platform is really designed to
leverage data. We really started
with leveraging the locomotive
data, but the shop data is also important,”
said Shubs. “When we
designed the Uptime platform,
we kind of had two work fl ows in
mind. We had a lot of railroads
telling us what they wanted. Th e
platform analyzes data and then
leverages solutions for the people
who are doing the maintenance.”
Reporting
Operational Data
Both intelligent platforms revolve
around making the operational data
easy to access, thus making sure that
agencies and railroads can keep cars
in service and keep operations up.
SIEMENS’ WHEEL Smart Prediction.
Siemens
statistics around the asset and the
third one is about implementing or
providing insights on using those
predictions to provide actual maintenance
action.”
Railigent not only monitors the
rail cars themselves, but also the
fi xed infrastructure to build models
around how assets fail.
“It’s really important to know
how things fail. Th is business is
really a combination between
demand and the reliability of the
vehicle into an analytics platform
to support predictive diagnostic,”
explained Davidoff . “We would
build a model around the condition
of the failures.”
Th at process allows for maintenance
personnel to determine how
the failure came about, where it did
and if there were changes that they
could make to prevent similar failures
from happening in the future.
“By providing the kind of innovation
around predictive diagnostics
we can analyze what is going
on and provide valuable insights
to the operator,” Davidoff added.
Progress Rail saw instances
where rail lines were attempting to
By Maile Bucher
With predictive technology, rail cars can
be kept in service longer and maintenance
workers are able to pinpoint issues, solving
them with ease.
“By
providing
the kind of
innovation
around
predictive
diagnostics,
we can analyze
what is going
on and provide
valuable
insights to the
operator.”
-SIMON
DAVIDOFF