Applying systems engineering to optimise the operation and maintenance of railway vehicles throughout the value chain
conference contribution
posted on 2011-10-03, 13:04authored byRichard J. Clayton, Chris Backhouse, Michael J. Provost, Samir Dani, J. Lovell
A recent move by the UK government to purchase two new railway vehicle fleets from the provider offering the lowest whole-life,
whole-system cost creates significant challenges to traditional manufacturers and their extended enterprises.
This paper describes the work of a collaborative academic-industry research project; applying systems engineering to enable the
optimisation of the operation and maintenance of railway vehicles – one aspect of railway vehicles’ lives which will need to be
fully understood in order to offer optimised whole-life contracts.
A model of the current operation and maintenance extended enterprise is created using soft systems methodology with critical
value generating parameters identified.
Explanations are presented for the perception of the current extended enterprise being too expensive, slow to respond and
inflexible. Future work is discussed detailing how systems engineering approaches and systems thinking can be further used to
bring about a more optimised approach to operating and maintaining railway vehicles in the UK.
History
School
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Citation
CLAYTON, R.J., BACKHOUSE, C.J., PROVOST, M.J. ...et al., 2009. Applying systems engineering to optimise the operation and maintenance of railway vehicles throughout the value chain. IN: Kalawsky, R.S., O'Brien, J., Goonetilleke, T. ...et al. (eds.). Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research, Loughborough, UK, 20 - 23 April.