Railigent X Health States - better maintenance decisions through AI

Let’s take bogies as an example, a critical subsystem that accounts for a major share of the total maintenance cost of a train. Especially wheels are subject to heavy mechanical stress. Slippery tracks, heavy braking and faulty brakes or bearings can lead to flat spots. It’s crucial to detect and rectify such issues quickly – to minimize operational impact and prevent further damage to train or track.

The Railigent X application Health States provides maintainers with AI-driven data on the condition of each bogie and other critical assets, while also interpreting that data in a way that enables maintenance planning decisions and timely intervention.

Knowing actual asset conditions helps maintainers reduce unnecessary maintenance work and material consumption. This starts with collecting condition data from various sources, e.g. on-board bogie monitoring, underfloor wheel lathe and automated vehicle inspection (AVI) systems. While these data provide different perspectives on the condition of a particular component, it’s essential to interpret them in the right manner and draw the right conclusions.

This is exactly where Health State’s powerful decision-support model comes into play that lets maintainers know how each bogie is doing and which maintenance actions need to be planned.

Based on the experience that Siemens Mobility has amassed from thousands of trains in operation, the comprehensive AI model of Health States interprets live data into an easy-to-read visualization. Familiar traffic-light colors provide direct insight into the condition of different components.

• Red: immediate maintenance action required
• Yellow: action required at next planned inspection
• Green: everything is fine

The Health States application thereby consolidates the data from all relevant sources and creates one consistent assessment. 

In addition, Health States as part of the Railigent X platform supports a high level of interoperability with other IT systems, enabling a seamless end-to-end workflow. For example, it allows for an automated generation of workorders with all relevant data in the maintainer’s Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) via a standardized data interface, i.e. API. Thus, a consistent workflow can be achieved from the first failure alert to the successful completion of the workorder, helping to avoid unnecessary manual intervention.

Thanks to its comprehensive decision-support model and integrated approach, Health States saves time and resources in a number of ways. The main benefits are: