A NEW APPROACH TO MAINTENANCE
Adoption of the digital train approach can revolutionise train maintenance, Nomad Digital’s commercial director Jay Saw told the Golden Spanners conference.
To set the context, Mr Saw pointed out that the current budget for train maintenance in the UK is £2 billion. The McNulty report set a target to cut costs by 30%, and Mr Saw stated that significant savings can be achieved in maintenance through the use of ICT and operational technology to create a digital train.
In comparison to the airlines and car industry, the rail industry has been slow to adopt this technology: Nomad believes that only 10% of trains across the world are truly connected. But while the Digital Railway programme has at last brought this thinking to bear, too many operators add digital systems in a piecemeal way and one-third of systems experts are expected to leave their company through retirement within 10 years, creating an impending brain drain on their legacy systems.
For Nomad, the key to a fully networked, fully connected train is to start by understanding what information you can get out of it – having a blueprint in mind at the outset is vital. Norwegian operator NSB and others on the contine…
