Presentations
Case study: Data driven maintenance of industrial gas turbines
Chris Jones Manager - North East Region, Frazer Nash
Accelerated Innovation and its application to data driven maintenance
Sarah Mulcahy and Hamssa Qureshi, Project Managers from Network Rail's R&D Accelerated Innovation programme
Workshop: Condition-based maintenance: From opportunity to benefits
Luisa Moisio, Director of R&D, RSSB
Innovation Management – A key to increasing business resilience
Rahul Shah, Sector Development Director EMEA, Built Environment, BSI
Introducing the Smart Rolling Stock Maintenance Research Facility
Richard Carr, SME Engagement Manager, University of Huddersfield Institute of Railway Research
Elevator Pitch: Product Governance Ltd
Adam Palm, Managing Director
Event report
The final session began on implementing change in a business kicked off with Chris Jones from engineering consultancy Frazer Nash, who presented on their work to remotely monitor gas turbines and its applicability to the rail industry.
Industrial gas turbines are large complex machines and require condition-based lifeing and monitoring – Chris said that although selling an engine on an availability basis rather than as an asset is not “new stuff”, with Rolls-Royce doing it in the 1960s, it is a good way to improve performance of the asset. Currently, Rolls-Royce sell the availability of power from their engines, which have thousands of sensors to provide live data of the status and performance of the assets.
This real-time data helps the teams model performance and understand when essential maintenance is needed.
Hamssa Qureshi and Sarah Mulcahy from Network Rail presented on the Accelerated Innovation programme, which aims to speed up the innovation process for Network Rail across the regions. They emphasised that the programme encourages collaboration and get early feedback from users to implement change – enabling project teams to receive more data and maximise its benefits.
On project delivery, Hamssa explained the programme looks to value individuals and interactions over processes and tools, focusing on collaboration. It also values working solutions over comprehensive documentation – i.e. to build a “minimal viable product” and work from there. The team also looks to respond to change and feedback, instead of sticking rigidly to a plan – she explained “there is no shame” in changing scope of a project following feedback.
This creates a number of benefits including improved visibility to customers throughout a project, early delivery of parts of a solutions creating value sooner, improved adaptability and mitigating risk through early delivery. In short, they aim to be ‘better, faster and cheaper’.
Sarah also explained that the project team estimates Network Rail can create a 25% extension of the life of Switchings and Crossings (S&C) through their data-driven approach.
RSSB Director of R&D Luisa Moisio, delivered a workshop of the Rail Technical Strategy (RTS) and how it aims to transform the use of data across the industry. Luisa touched on the five functional priorities and the three critical enablers to get there, and stressed there is a real opportunity to upskill the current workforce and to bring in new talent and skills.
Luisa explained that remote condition monitoring on rolling stock and fixed assets is a key party of the ‘reliable and easy to maintain’ priority. Their vision is that by 2025 condition-based inspection and maintenance will be widely used and replace periodic inspection.
Richard Carr from the University of Huddersfield then covered on their smart Rolling Stock Maintenance Research Project. He began by highlighted the McNulty report which found that round 40% of the life cycle cost of a vehicle is in maintenance, which was around £730million a year. He highlighted there is real pressure on TOCs and the supply chain the drive down these costs.
There is more of an emphasis on remote condition monitoring, both intelligent on-board tools and intelligent diagnostics tools, highlighting the examples of Siemens’ Nexus and Perpetuum’s work in this area.
He also pointed to the importance of the RTS to drive this change in the industry, emphasizing the importance of developing new capabilities in the industry on data.
Richard also showcased their new facility, it was a £1.8 million project to build the facility which will run until June 2023 to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of train maintenance. The facility will include maintenance and automation testing facilities, digital twin capability and an augmented reality suite. They are also developing a small-scale maintenance robot pit.
The University has found that remote condition monitoring can provide at least a 30% reduction in train delays across the network.
Richard ended with a call out to the industry to collaborate to share solutions and any software or models that suppliers may be able to bring.