Maintenance analysis for continuous improvement of railway infrastructure performance

Abstract

Railway transport system is massive and complex, and as such it requires effective maintenance to achieve the business goal of safe, economic and sustainable transportation of passengers and goods. The growing demand for improved service quality and capacity target by railway infrastructure managers requires appropriate maintenance analysis to facilitate continuous improvement of infrastructure performance. This paper presents the application of risk matrix as a maintenance analysis method for the identification of track zones that are bottlenecks that limit operational capacity and quality. Furthermore, an adapted criticality analysis method is proposed to create a hierarchical improvement list for addressing the problem of train mission interruption and reduced operational capacity. A case study of a line section of the Swedish network is presented. The result classifies the zones on the line section into different risk categories based on their contribution to loss of capacity and punctuality. In addition, an improvement list for the lower-level system is presented to facilitate maintenance decisions and continuous improvement at both operational and strategic levels.

Keywords::

• railway capacity
• quality of service
• maintenance performance indicators
• maintenance decision support
• bottleneck
• risk assessment
• maintenance analysis
• improvement

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Corrigendum

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of Trafikverket and Luleå Railway Research Centre (JVTC) and also the technical support of Mr Lars Wikberg of Trafikveket.

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. Email: [email protected]

^3. Email: [email protected]

^4. Email: [email protected]