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Demonstration of the reliability performance of the signalling system on the Turin-Padua high-speed railway line

SERVICE MERCATO CLIENT LEADING COMPANY IN THE RAILWAY FIELD YEAR 2016-2019 in corso

Brief

Provide support in monitoring the reliability and availability performance of the (trackside) signalling system and in demonstrating the achievement of the applicable contractual requirements from the records of failures occurring during the operational trial period.

 

Project challenge

 

  • To define a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of failures, from capturing relevant information from maintenance reports to verifying that applicable requirements (related to system functionality) are met.
  • To process a continuous flow of data (records of new faults) according to the defined methodology and provide dashboards summarising the results.
  • To interact with maintenance managers regarding significant failures (in terms of product service failures) and unclear records.

Solution

A procedure has been defined for analysing the records of failures that have occurred, together with a list of classification criteria, in order to identify their type (hardware or software), determine their causality and assess their effects on the service.

A calculation model was developed to express the reliability requirements (originally defined in terms of mean time between consecutive failures) in terms of maximum number of permissible failures and maximum cumulative unavailability time, so that the observed performance could be compared with the required performance.

Calculation procedures were defined and IT tools developed for updating indicators and indices following the reporting of new failures.

Specific in-depth analyses were carried out with maintenance managers (root-cause analysis) regarding significant failures (in terms of service output) and unclear records.

Compliance with contractual requirements was demonstrated with respect to a maximum number of hardware failures and the maximum time of unavailability due to software errors (per function).

A procedure has been defined to be applied in case of non-compliance with the requirements, in order to discern a real non-compliance from a statistical fluctuation within acceptable limits.

Dashboards summarising the results have been developed for continuous monitoring of system reliability and availability performance.

Execution phases

FASE 1

Review and update of the list of installed units (LRUs).

FASE 2

Association between installed LRUs and system functions.

FASE 3

Classification of the effects of the failure of each LRU on the function to which it contributes.

FASE 4

Analysis of the reports of the individual failures that occurred.

FASE 5

Investigation of significant or unclear events through in-depth analyses with maintenance technicians.

FASE 6

Definition of the maximum number of faults admissible for each type of LRU.

FASE 7

Demonstration of compliance with contractual requirements.

Achieved results

 

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