Background / Issues

Large-scale maintenance and service poses management difficulties

Russian Railways is one of the largest railway companies in the world. This company transports 1.3 billion tonnes# of cargo and more than 1.3 billion passengers each year, which is equivalent to 80% of Russia's total goods transportation and 40% of its passenger transportation. With a route extending 85,500 km from the Black Sea across to the Pacific Ocean, it is the second largest network in the world. At the same time, it is also a center of excellence for maintenance because the burden on the rolling stock is so high as it travels through some of the world's harshest environments.
The maintenance management of a huge number of vehicles, including approximately 20,000 locomotives, 25,000 passenger cars and 630,000 freight cars is extremely complex. Identifying and tracking repaired parts, managing and adjusting schedules on the fly and challenged to improve productivity all made the job harder.
(# as of 2008 when the solution was installed)

Solution

Integrate and control all processes and implement a traceability system

Renovating the freight cars of one of the world's leading railway networks required speedy response to complex requirements, and Mitsubishi Electric uniquely possessed the technical expertise to offer the most suitable solution. First, we identified the parts to be repaired, and made it possible to adjust maintenance schedules. Moreover, we seamlessly connected all steps of the repair process with a single automation platform as a building block towards central control and monitoring. Furthermore, the introduction of a traceability system that utilized intelligent RFID tags attached to the different parts to be processed. has made it possible to eliminate losses and troubleshoot between processes, resulting in a significant improvement in productivity.

Effect

Improving productivity by 70%

The integrated solution that Russian Railways implemented enabled them to collect the current data/status of the freight cars, control and monitor the factories overall operations, and target improved efficiencies in overall maintenance. The result has been processing capacity has almost doubled, making it possible to maintain and repair 3,000 more freight cars per year, bringing the total to 7,300 per year.

SMKL

Add overall visibility and unit traceability

Level D

Optimize

Making ROI bigger step by step by using SMKL.

Level C

Analyze

Level B

Visualize

Level A

Collect

Level 1

Worker

Level 2

Workplace

Level 3

Factory

Level 4

Supply Chain

“Maturity Model” is a known type of analysis, it also makes the reader think of higher management analysis so is the right way to describe this….because it is actually a maturity model!

Just to make continuous investment is probably a bad business decision but to make that investment sustainable means that it pays for its self and continues to drive value – simply investing continuously does not guarantee benefit – only cost

Traceability

• STEP IA2 :

  Add traceability
  for all production unitsKnow where each part is at any one time, what has happened to it previously and what should happen to it next
• STEP IIB3 :

  Visualize the entire supply chainBringing visibility across the total operation from shunting yards to refurbishment and maintenance lines.