Accelerating Maintenance Performance—Passenger Light Rail

The modern era with its approach to simplify human effort has brought along subsequent complexities in the passenger light rail industry. The modern transit system has increasingly turned automated and thus complex. Automated operational processes have reduced their dependency on human effort; maintenance too has remained system driven, more so by technology than on priority. The lean has been towards advancing technology rather than restructuring the existing light rail maintenance system that could bring about excellence in  vehicle maintenance.

Maintenance management has been a key area of analysis. William Edward Deming on “Total Quality Management”, states that management must “substitute aids and helpful leadership.”[1] Similarly John Day’s Maintenance Management philosophy states, “maintenance should be treated as an investment rather than a cost” and at the same time, he points out that “people would much rather work on what they enjoy, what they are good at or what they think is important—before working on what is actually important.”[2]

Factors I see influencing the level of maintenance on light rail vehicles are as follows:

·      Operating environment

·      Type of vehicle

·      Experience of manufacturer

·      Labor constraints

·      Staff experience

·      Budget constraints

·      Spare ratios[3]

It is generally seen that priority issues take a backseat when the weekly scheduling efforts for light rail maintenance begin, and the backlogs get conveniently forgotten.  This concept of priority system is gaining momentum, as its purpose is to drive scheduling and also mark priorities in the context of coordinating. There is an ever-increasing number of maintenance tracking software programs being introduced that offer this maintenance priority system built in however, it is up to the users to embrace the benefits deciding that they out way the time spent incorporating them.   

There are many great systems available and my experience is with Asset Works and other Trapeze products; prior to this a Unix based custom system and Navigator an Aviation maintenance tracking software.   All these systems had built in priority systems but none fully utilized to improve maintenance.  The last system I used had priority system default settings and when data was extracted it was found that over 97% of the time this default setting was the recorded priority.

Companies spend an enormous about of money on these systems expecting to be able to gain more insight into their current maintenance requirements. I believe that prior to analyzing data we should be turning our attention to training.  We should first map out concrete objectives. After these objectives are detailed our desired results should be outlined and goals set.  The processes and procedures are put into writing driving the next step to implement system and company specific training.  With this training it is key to explain what the goals, objectives and where the benchmarks are.  Personal who understand “why” will generally work towards these same goals.  Display regularly your progress and take feed back on ways to improve the system.  Make your decisions on how your system and priority’s will be utilized and do not back down from this.  Resistance is to be expected and will be overcome but wavering from your plan will only increase resistance to the change.   

Your companies priority system can be designed in a complex or simple way, where generally five levels are considered a prerequisite to plan and schedule vehicle maintenance or any process for that matter. A simple system could use the choices of safety, emergency, urgent, routine or scheduled, operations defect and service delay on-line-outage, but on the other hand, a complex priority system can use up to 15 or more choices.

According to Doc Palmer there is “nothing wrong with using either an adjective or time-based [priority] system (or some combination of the two), but the system should facilitate communication.” The last two decades have seen resurgence in the light rail industry and it is our responsibility to build efficient systems.  Operating costs are directly related to system maintenance, which would include adequate staffing for light rail vehicles, fleet maintenance, wayside maintenance [Maintenance-of-Way (MOW)], and facilities and equipment maintenance.

George Sifri has an interesting insight on the need for project selection and priority system. According to him, any organization with a multitude of projects working concurrently will have “number of small and large projects in a portfolio exceed[s] the available resources such as funds, equipment, and competencies.” Secondly, he also brings into light the politics within an organization, playing a major role in priority system management and uses the terminology of “sacred cows” to describe certain projects gaining or losing significance, accordingly.

Implementation of a new and defined priority system to the passenger light rail industry is important to avoid capacity overload, and this coupled with project politics would subsequently lead to frustration, confusion, and an inefficient use of resources. The system’s basic maintenance philosophy, its practice regarding contracted maintenance, labor issues, vehicles, wayside and facilities issues have to be delved deeply into, before these questions aimed to bring about an efficient priority system to industry, get an answer:

·      How can the power of politics be minimized?

·      How can projects be consistently prioritized to support the organizational strategy?

·      How can a prioritized list of projects be used to allocate scarce organizational resources?

·      How can the process encourage bottom-up initiation of projects, which support organizational goals and strategies?[4]

The answer is not a sophisticated and fancy priority system but the right maintenance adopted and utilized at the right time. A systematic process with carefully selected projects and allocated resources will benefit the light rail industry and accelerate its development and growth.

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[1] http://www.1000advices.com/guru/quality_tqm_14points_deming.html

[2] http://www.reliabilityweb.com/art04/alumax.pdf

[3] http://books.google.co.in/books?id=tsK2DarqNiMC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=light+rail+maintenance+analysis&source=bl&ots=Sazul3vhta&sig=IKM-VMEIvtpxiBqEtlnelQQ9SBg&hl=en&ei=As-2TKOoHtCPcY7IxfYJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=light%20rail%20maintenance%20analysis&f=false

[4] http://www.builderau.com.au/strategy/projectmanagement/soa/Prioritise-projects-to-align-with-strategic-plan/0,339028292,320273263,00.htm

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Cost Cutting in Light Rail Maintenance

Light rail maintenance may just be described as a wheel in motion, whether it’s on or off the track.  If it’s a train in motion, it’s determined a success though.  However, every success has a different story and unique circumstances.  It’s difficult to devise a perfect formula for an optimal maintenance system, although it’s quite natural to compare one program with the general norm being followed in the industry.

When the economy is in a downturn and budgets on a shoestring, nothing can be more dangerous than following the same herd that’s been running for years.  Every industry has its own unique system and each organization, in turn, has its own way of making their system work. Unfortunately, philosophies on rail maintenance budgets are followed with the general norm always in mind rather than the uniqueness of the agency or the industry sector.

The light rail industry functions on complex mechanical and electrical systems with moving parts that are constantly exposed to wear and tear.  For light rail service to be reliable, an efficient maintenance system is elementary.  The old saying “squeaky wheel gets the grease” seems to fit well as long as the wheels aren’t squeaking and they are presumed to be rolling smoothly down the track.  Sadly, this is often not the case.  R. Atkins in his paper, “5 Ways to Cut Costs While Shooting Your Maintenance Effort in the Foot” has listed five sure-fire methods aimed at trimming costs, and at the same time axing the maintenance system down at their roots.

Method #1 - The revenue operation of a successful light rail system is proportional to requisite training and preparation of its operational, maintenance and service staff. Key senior operating and maintenance personnel need to be involved in defining and addressing the uniqueness of a particular transit agency.  Suspension or elimination of training and training workshops give immediate positive signs by saving labor hours and eventually cutting cost.  What needs to be kept in mind is that without a trained, core group of maintenance staff, parts might not be installed properly or can even be changed when not needed and their replacement cost would equally add to the downtime and budget.

Method #2 - Undoubtedly, the other most popular method to cut cost is firing personnel or some other reduction in staffing, but sadly these shots are more random than aimed.  Most transit agencies have their maintenance standards and goals, and without adequately trained staff, it is obvious that the standards are being lowered.  Substantial short term savings are guaranteed with the reduction of skilled manpower, but the falling standards and inadequate maintenance will hit the budget hard in the long run.

Method #3 - The success of any light rail transit agency can be measured by its safety, reliability, punctuality, and the quality of service offered.  Needless to say, a well maintained organization should have a significant portion of its technician’s time being spent on process maintenance and inspection.  When observed closely, cutting down on process maintenance and inspection would not only save on the large amount of maintenance salaries, but also on the maintenance program, compounded with the cost of parts and materials.  This method of cost cutting has serious repercussions because without a preventive maintenance program, a transit agency would quickly find itself struggling to meet service demands.  This will quickly be followed with an unreliable fleet causing a reduction in ridership that couldn’t count on a reliable means of transportation.

Method #4 - As mentioned earlier, reliability is the key to running a successful light rail transit agency.  If the agency has adopted a “Baling Wire and Duct Tape Method” to cut cost, the fleet will not be serviceable for long.  Problems have to be eliminated before they become endemic to the system.  To salvage a situation where proper maintenance was avoided, major overhauls and refits would be the only alternative.

Method # 5 - Similarly, reactive maintenance would lead the cost cutting program to the same avenue. In reactive maintenance, also termed the “Laissez Faire Method”, a system is operated until failure.  Reactive maintenance often results in unpredictable system performance and availability.  The long-term effect of this method of cost cutting will lead the light rail transit agency to major reconditioning in order to regain any kind of reliable service.  This is both costly but also damages the reputation of the organization.

These 5 methods of cost cutting are considered the best methods to cut cost in any industry. I have a different perspective to these methods.  I would say that each will have a positive short-term effect on the maintenance budget—and each will have a negative long-term effect.  This is damaging to the vehicles and the employee’s moral that causes a cultural shift in the organization that will take years to repair.  To borrow from R. Atkins, “The use of several or all of them at once is a guaranteed recipe for failure.” Light rail maintenance managers are under immense pressure to deliver reliability, on time and on tight budgets during these difficult economic times.  The ultimate warning is that when finding ways to reduce costs, be wary of derailing your entire operation farther down the track!

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