‘Innovation is mission critical.’ That quote from HS2’s Beth West may have referred to the coming high-speed line, but was a widespread sentiment amongst attendees at this year’s Railway Industry Association innovation conference.
‘We want to give our suppliers freedom to innovate, to come up with practices and processes that don’t exist yet’ said Ms West. ‘We’re going to have dwell times as short as two minutes: we expect our suppliers to find solutions to issues like luggage storage and wayfinding that are compatible with that. Everybody is going to have to work together to ensure passengers make quick entry and exit from the trains.’
The suppliers seem keen to rise to the challenge. ‘We’re accelerating the uptake of innovation’ said Gordon Wakeford, industry chair of the Rail Supply Group. Mike Hulme, managing director of trains and modernisation with Alstom, reported his firm’s aim is that by 2020, 30% of orders booked will come from newly-developed products. He cited the iLint (p76, November 2016 issue), Alstom’s zero-emission train in Germany that is fuelled by hydrogen cells, as an example of taking technology from another industry and repackaging it for rail.
The role of the component supplier…
