Diego Galar

Maintenance performance metrics: a state‐of‐the‐art review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research and development in the measurement of maintenance performance. It considers the problems of various measuring parameters and comments on the lack of structure in and references for the measurement of maintenance performance. The main focus is to determine how value can be created for organizations by measuring maintenance performance, examining such maintenance strategies as condition‐based maintenance, reliability‐centred maintenance, e‐maintenance, etc. In other words, the objectives are to find frameworks or models that can be used to evaluate different maintenance strategies and determine the value of these frameworks for an organization.Design/methodology/approach – A state‐of‐the‐art literature review has been carried out to answer the following two research questions. First, what approaches and techniques are used for maintenance performance measurement (MPM) and which MPM techniques are optimal for evaluating maintenance str...

Performance measurement and management for maintenance: a literature review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of the performance measurement (PM) in maintenance. The authors aim to discuss the background and development of the PM for maintenance, besides defining the concept of performance measures for maintenance and the frameworks developed. Design/methodology/approach – A detailed and extensive literature search and study was undertaken by the authors on the concept and definition of PM, performance indicators (PIs), maintenance performance indicators and various performance frameworks. The history and theory of PM over different phases of business and technological developments have been critically examined and analysed in this review paper. Findings – This paper reviews and presents the different PIs and PM frameworks like; balanced scorecard (BSC), performance prism, performance pyramid and performance matrix, etc., and identifies their characteristics and shortcomings. After considering related issues and challenges, frameworks and appro...

Railway Assets: A Potential Domain for Big Data Analytics☆

Abstract Two concepts currently at the leading edge of todays information technology revolution are Analytics and Big Data. The public transportation industry has been at the forefront in utilizing and implementing Analytics and Big Data, from ridership forecasting to transit operations Rail transit systems have been especially involved with these IT concepts, and tend to be especially amenable to the advantages of Analytics and Big Data because they are generally closed systems that involve sophisticated processing of large volumes of data. The more that public transportation professionals and decision makers understand the role of Analytics and Big Data in their industry in perspective, the more effectively they will be able to utilize its promise. This paper gives an overview of Big Data technologies in context of transportation with specific to Railways. This paper also gives an insight on how the existing data modules from the transport authority combines Big Data and how can be incorporated in providing maintenance decision making.

The influence of the operating environment on manual and automated load-haul-dump machines : a fault tree analysis

The automated load-haul-dump (LHD) machines have the potential to increase productivity and improve safety, but there are many issues to be considered when optimising the operation of LHDs. Todays focus on improved equipment reliability is part of the problem, and another difficult issue is the special conditions and constraints of the operating environment. For automated LHDs, the latter issue is even more important, as humans have been removed from the production area and are not close by to solve the problems. The purpose of this paper is to find the causes of LHD idle time and to study their impact on the operation of LHDs. In this study, real-time process data and maintenance data from an underground mine in Sweden have been refined and integrated. The study takes into account the complexity of the mine environment, discusses the factors to be considered when optimising and automating the operation and uses fault tree analysis (FTA) to analyse the idle time.

Production and maintenance performance analysis: manual versus semi‐automatic LHDs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and analyse the production and maintenance performance of a manual and a semi‐automatic load haul dump (LHD) machine to find similarities and differences.Design/methodology/approach – Real time process‐, operational‐ and maintenance data, from an underground mine in Sweden, have been refined and aggregated into KPIs in order to make the comparison between the LHDs.Findings – The main finding is the demonstration of how production and maintenance data can be improved through information fusion, showing some unexpected results for maintenance of automatic and semi‐automatic LHDs in the mining industry. It was found that up to one third of the manually entered workshop data are not consistent with the automatically recorded production times. It is found that there are similarities in utilization and filling rate but differences in produced tonnes/machine hour between the two machines.Originality/value – The originality in this paper is the information fusion...

Link and effect model for performance improvement of railway infrastructure

Railway traffic has increased over the last decade due to its fuel efficiency and the need to reduce emissions. The railway infrastructure performance needs to be measured to allow assets to be managed effectively against set objectives. Various systems are used to collect and store data on traffic, failures, inspections, track quality, etc. However, these systems are often used in an ad hoc manner, partly because of the weaknesses of traditional performance measurement systems. This paper proposes a link and effect model which is focused on the areas of continuous improvement, the key elements of strategic planning and on the underlying factors responsible for the railway performance. The model provides information on the performance of railway systems and components, and how they are linked to each other and to the overall objectives, thereby facilitating proactive decision-making. The model is applied in a case study on the Iron Ore Line in Sweden. The performance of a section of the line is studied in terms of failures, train delays and repair times, and ranked through a risk matrix and composite indicator.

Maintenance metrics: A hierarchical model of balanced scorecard

The system of performance measurement of maintenance function should cover all processes related to it within the organization. There must be an interconnection between the different indicators, so the numbers can be interpreted in order to reach a good conclusion for decision making. This premise implies a hierarchy of indicators needed in a dual way. First, it will require maintenance indicators to be segmented according to the areas of influence for the rest of the organization, posed by interactions with finance department, human resources, purchasing, and, of course, with production in the seeking of compliance with corporate objectives. Simultaneously, these indicators correspond to different levels in the organization and therefore they will be segmented according to the hierarchical position of end users.

Human factor in maintenance performance measurement

The maintenance performance measurement is often faced with a lack in knowledge about the real function of the maintenance department within organizations, and consequently the absence of appropriate targets emanating from the global mission and vision. These facts bring about metrics not adapted to the real needs, which has a strong load of human factor and without a roadmap of the amount of data to be collected, their processing and use in decision making. This article proposes a model where qualitative and quantitative methods are combined in order to complement advantages and disadvantages of them both.

Performance indicators and terminology for value driven maintenance

Purpose – Value driven maintenance (VDM) is a fairly new maintenance management methodology based on four maintenance value drivers and the formula of net present value (NPV) to calculate the value of different maintenance strategies. However, the dependability of the engineering assets needs to be assessed in order to make an estimation of the NPV. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically analyse standardised indicators to find the most essential indicators for the four value drivers and for estimation of the NPV. Terminology containing performance drivers and killers are common in the field of asset management, but not many publications can be found for their detailed descriptions. One section in this paper is therefore dedicated to review these terms. A comprehensive description and classification of performance killers and drivers, and of indicators for VDM are presented in this paper.Design/methodology/approach – Review of literature for technical terminology and review of standards for ...

Condition monitoring at the wheel/rail interface for decision-making support

Many railway assets, such as wheels, suffer from increasing deterioration during operation. Good condition monitoring based on good decision-making techniques can lead to accurate assessment of the current health of the wheels. This, in turn, will improve safety, facilitate maintenance planning and scheduling, and reduce maintenance costs and down-time. In this paper, wheel/rail forces are selected as a parameter (feature) for the condition monitoring of wheel health. Once wheels are properly thresholded, determining their condition can help operators to define maintenance limits for their rolling stock. In addition, if rail forces are used as condition indicators of wheel wear, it is possible to use measurement stations that cost less than ordinary profile stations. These stations are located on ordinary tracks and can provide the condition of wheelsets without causing shutdowns or slowdowns of the railway system and without interfering with railway traffic. The paper uses the iron-ore transport line in northern Sweden as a test scenario to validate the use of wheel/rail forces as indicators of wagon and wheel health. The iron-ore transport line has several monitoring systems, but in this paper only two of these systems will be used. Wheel/rail force measurements are performed on curves to see how the vehicle negotiates the curve, and wheel profile measurements are done on tangent track not far away. The vehicles investigated are iron-ore wagons with an axle load of 30 tonnes and a loaded top speed of 60 km/h. The measurements are non-intrusive, since trains are moving and assets are not damaged during the testing process.