Steven Hagner
ABB Enterprise Software
Speaking on 24 November during the Big Data in Railway Operations sessions
Steven Hagner
Industry Solution Executive Enterprise Software
ABB
The Role of Asset Health Platforms in Rail Asset Performance Management
New technologies are generating huge amounts of data about the usage and condition of railway assets, yet maintenance and financial planning teams struggle to make better strategic decisions based on that data. An Asset Health platform combines the data from these many different technologies and merges it with the asset details, maintenance histories and manual inspection and testing results. Asset Health enables the analysis of the data, prescribes suggested actions, prioritizes recommendations, and delivers visualizations of incoming data and overall asset health to support collaborative decision making through-out the railway.
Experience with such solutions has shown that there are a set of critical requirements for such Asset Health platforms to be successful:
- Flexibility about the sources of data. For example, basing decisions only on sensor data without considering maintenance histories often leads to inaccurate recommendation.
- Flexibility regarding sources of analysis algorithms. This is an area of very rapid advances in computing capabilities. Simple trend analysis from the past is rapidly being replaced by advanced machine learning technologies. As no one company has the best solution for every rail asset type, it is critical for solutions to be open to taking analysis algorithms from multiple vendors.
- Processes for using results. Solutions which stop at the generation of a “health score” do not provide enough value to justify the setup effort. Asset Health solutions build in the processes to support decision making based on the analysis, recommendations and prioritization of actions.
In this presentation we will review these requirements and look at how solutions from other industries are being combined with rail-specific analysis algorithms to quickly enable rail companies to improve safety, reduce maintenance and capital expenditure costs, and improve the reliability of their system.
View the topics of discussion and the speakers for each individual theme:
- Day 1: Wayside Train Monitoring Systems
- Day 2: Rail Infrastructure Measuring & Monitoring
- Day 3: Big Data in Railway Operations
We look forward to welcoming you in Naples between 22 – 24 November for the Intelligent Rail Summit.