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Mobilising asset management in the rail industry
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"23 July 2007
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Most companies in the rail industry have invested in back office ERP systems to look after financial and other areas of their business. Many use SAP’s R/3 and SAP ERP system as their core system platform, often integrated with other or legacy systems which look after inventory, purchasing, and the maintenance of rolling stock, lineside equipment and track infrastructure.
Some of these companies are now consolidating their legacy systems around the SAP core platform and, in the process, are looking at how they can both streamline and improve the business processes that these systems support.
Given that much of the equipment utilised within the rail industry is by its very nature mobile and geographically dispersed, companies are also looking at how they can enable key workers to connect to back office whilst they are either remote from the main office or maintenance plant or working on the repair and maintenance of rolling stock in large maintenance sheds away from computer terminals.
The ability to mobilise remote workers and enable them to transact with back-office systems can give significant advantages through the reduction in paper-based forms, real time update and enquiry, and reduction in both back office staff employed and errors associated with the rekeying of data from paper forms into the system.
The technology now exists to connect various mobile devices to SAP systems, and run applications on the device both on-line and off-line with later synchronisation. The later is important in areas of poor connectivity to the GPRS mobile network (for example inside tunnels or remote locations) or when out of range of a site-based RF networks.
Some typical examples of where these types of mobile application have been deployed are explained below.
Mobile service/plant maintenance:
This allows engineers to carry out and record essential repair details online without having to write extensive details on paper. Engineers are also able to view current stock levels of spare parts and locate the depot where they can source a material for a particular job.
Lists of jobs can be “pushed” to the mobile device and their job schedule updated to allow repairs or emergencies to be prioritised, improving resource utilisation and ensuring that repairs are completed in priority order. Engineers are able to record the work carried out and, if necessary, create a new notification for follow up work if required.
RF barcode inventory management
Attaching bar codes to spare parts means that the item together with its serial number and other key information can be scanned via a reader. This means that inventory traceability can be maintained without the need for recording long numbers onto paper, which can be susceptible to transcription errors.
One of the rail operators is just embarking on the deployment of such a system from iQlink Ltd in their engineering stores and at the same time introducing a simple barcoded bin solution to make items easy to find and manage within a specific bin location within the store.
Digital pen technology
Digital pen technology uses special printed forms which enable workers to complete a form (such as a maintenance record) whilst also digitising the keystrokes, and automatically updating the backend (ERP) system. The digital pen contains an infrared camera, a processor, memory, a data link (either USB or Bluetooth for mobile applications where a mobile phone acts as a modem) and a rechargeable battery.
Serco Solutions working with Meticulus, has deployed a digital pen and paper technology solution within the West Coast Train Care maintenance environment at Alstom Transport, with automated updating into the SAP ERP system. The paper form is retained in order to keep a record of what was done and by whom, but all data is automatically updated from the pen.
2D barcodes
2D barcodes are printed as a series of dots and have the ability to hold much more information than the traditional barcode one sees on a typical product label. One of the problems with paper based barcodes, particularly when used outside, is that they are very prone to damage and the effects of weather.
Unipart Rail has developed a capability whereby a 2D barcode can be laser-etched onto metal parts and then read using a standard 2D barcode reader. The data from the reader can then be updated into the back end system.
“This has proven to be very robust in use and gets around some of the traditional wear and tear problems associated with paper bar codes,” said Peter Cullen from Unipart Expert Practices.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
RFID is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. An RFID tag is an object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves and enables much more data to be held within an electronic tag attached to a part or item of equipment. In addition read/write tags allow data to be written and rewritten with either fixed or mobile readers so allowing service history, and usage information etc. to be available on the item.
For example, a reader, integrated to a back-end ERP system, could record the date of inspection and the type of work carried out onto the tag, so that any one carrying out follow up work could read this data at a later date.
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