Managing Railcar Maintenance

A Primer on Practices and Improvement Opportunities

for the U.S. Transit Industry

SEPTEMBER 2013

FTA Report No. 0043

Federal Transit Administration

PREPARED BY
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 Managing Railcar
Maintenance
A Primer on Practices and
Improvement Opportunities
for the U.S. Transit Industry

SEPTEMBER 2013
FTA Report No. 0043

PREPARED BY

Tagan Blake
Lauren Isaac
Dr. David Rose

Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc.

One Penn Plaza
New York, NY 11019

SPONSORED BY

Federal Transit Administration

Office of Research, Demonstration and Innovation
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590

AVAIL ABLE ONLINE

http://www.fta.dot.gov/research

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION i

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION i
 Metric Conversion
Metric Conversion Table
Table

SYMBOL WHEN YOU KNOW MULTIPLY BY TO FIND SYMBOL

LENGTH

in inches 25.4 millimeters mm

ft feet 0.305 meters m

yd yards 0.914 meters m

mi miles 1.61 kilometers km

VOLUME

fl oz fluid ounces 29.57 milliliters mL

gal gallons 3.785 liters L

ft3 cubic feet 0.028 cubic meters m3

yd3 cubic yards 0.765 cubic meters m3

NOTE: volumes greater than 1000 L shall be shown in m3

MASS

oz ounces 28.35 grams g

lb pounds 0.454 kilograms kg

megagrams
T short tons (2000 lb) 0.907 Mg (or "t")
(or "metric ton")

TEMPERATURE (exact degrees)

o 5 (F-32)/9 o
F Fahrenheit Celsius C
or (F-32)/1.8

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION i

FEDERAL TRANSIT
FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION
TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION ii ii
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Managing Railcar Maintenance: A Primer on Practices and Improvement Opportunities NY-26-7011-00
for the U.S. Transit Industry
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Tagan Blake, Lauren Isaac, David Rose

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University of Michigan
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Available from: National Technical Information Service (NTIS), Springfield, VA 22161.
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13. ABSTRACT
This report surveys the state-of-practice of transit railcar maintenance management and fleet management practices. It emphasizes a
lifecycle management approach to fleet management. It also emphasizes the role of performance improvement programs and intro­
duces Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance as key examples of performance improvement approaches.
The report also covers planning and performance measurement for rail fleet maintenance, as well as the role of supporting business
processes and systems in railcar maintenance, including new vehicle procurement, facility upgrades, maintenance information systems,
and purchasing and materials management.

14. SUBJECT TERMS 15. NUMBER OF PAGES

Fleet management, railcar maintenance, maintenance management, reliability- 205
centered maintenance, total productive maintenance, lifecycle management

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Executive Summary
1 Railcar Lifecycle Management

2 Research Approach

2 Sections Overview

4 Section 1: Introduction to Railcar Maintenance Management

6 Railcar Vehicles in the U.S. Transit Industry

12 Introduction to Railcar Lifecycle Management Activities

17 Benefits of Improved Railcar Maintenance Management

18 The Challenges the Industry Faces with Railcar Maintenance Management
19 Key Aspects of Improving Railcar Maintenance Management
22 Section 2: Overview of Railcar Maintenance
22 The Spectrum of Maintenance Strategies

25 Vehicle Rehabilitation Programs

28 Outsourcing Railcar Maintenance

31 Collaboration with Manufacturers

33 Section 3: Railcar Maintenance Improvement Strategies

34 Identifying Target Vehicle Systems for Improvement
35 Evaluating the Business Impacts of Vehicle Systems and Components
38 Establishing Assets’ Overall Maintenance Effort
40 Using Criticality Analysis to Select Target Assets for Improvement
42 Using a Decision-Making Grid to Better Apply RCM and TPM
44 Reliability-Centered Maintenance

46 RCM Project Teams

47 The RCM Process

63 Total Productive Maintenance

64 Pillar #1: Maintenance Prevention and Process Improvement

75 Pillar #2: Customer and Quality Focus

81 Pillar #3: Collaboration and Teamwork

86 Pillar #4: Continuous Learning

88 Lessons for TPM Implementation

96 Section 4: Railcar Maintenance Planning Processes

97 Railcar Maintenance’s Role in Planning

98 Railcar Maintenance’s Role in Strategic Planning

100 Railcar Maintenance’s Role in Service Planning

101 Railcar Maintenance’s Role in Lifecycle Management Planning

107 Railcar Maintenance Budget and Work Planning

111 Section 5: Performance Measurement for Fleet Management

111 Introduction to Performance Measurement
112 Establishing Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures
113 Types of Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures
116 Performance Measures’ Relationship to Department and Agency Goals

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION iv

118 Establishing a Performance Baseline
120 Communicating Performance Data
122 Data Collection and Quality Assurance
122 Data Collection
123 Quality Assurance
124 Utilizing Performance Measures to Support Management Decisions
124 Performance Targets/Benchmarking
128 Decision Process
130 Performance Improvement and Accountability
138 Section 6: Workforce Training and Organizational Development
138 Addressing Skill Gaps
139 Identifying a Skill Gap
142 Selecting the Appropriate Training and Approach
148 Providing Targeted Training for Railcar Maintenance Leadership
151 Finding Time and Funding for Training
155 Preparing for the Requirements of New Technologies
156 Preventing Maintenance Knowledge Loss
157 Supporting a Positive Maintenance Culture
158 Recognition and Incentive Programs
159 Promoting Employee Engagement
164 Section 7: Supporting Processes and Systems
164 Vehicle Procurements
165 Program Oversight
167 Vehicle Specification Standardization and Maintainability
169 Best-Value Procurement
173 Railcar Maintenance Facility Projects
176 Purchasing and Materials Management
177 Inventory and Purchasing Roles and Responsibilities
178 Inventory Optimization
179 Inventory QA/QC
180 Materials Management Process Improvement
182 Information Technology Support
184 Asset Inventory: A Critical CMMS Function
186 Performance Improvement and the Role of IT
187 Maintenance Managers’ IT Responsibilities

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION v

LIST OF FIGURES

2 Figure ES-1: Railcar Maintenance Department Lifecycle Management

Responsibilities
4 Figure 1-1: Role of Railcar Maintenance in Overall Agency Business Model
9 Figure 1-2: Growth in the Number of U.S. Railcar Vehicles (2001 to 2011)
9 Figure 1-3: Number of Active Railcars in the United States by Age Cohort (2011)
10 Figure 1-4: Number of Active Railcars in the United States by Ownership
Status (2011)
11 Figure 1-5: Percent of Revenue Vehicles Maintained by Contractors (2011)
12 Figure 1-6: Total Number of Revenue Vehicles Maintained by Contractors (2011)
12 Figure 1-7: Railcar Lifecycle Management Activities
13 Figure 1-8: Conceptual Diagram of Light Rail Vehicles’ Lifecycle Costs
14 Figure 1-9: Level of Control Over Costs Through the Railcar Lifecycle
16 Figure 1-10: The Impact of Effective Preventive Maintenance on Total
Maintenance Effort
20 Figure 1-11: Railcar Maintenance Business Model
24 Figure 2-1: Maintenance Strategy Progression
25 Figure 2-2: Common Railcar Maintenance Triggers
30 Figure 2-3: Advantages and Disadvantages of Contracting Railcar
Maintenance
34 Figure 3-1: Maintenance Strategy Improvement Process
37 Figure 3-2: Functional Block Diagram of a Diesel Multiple Unit
40 Figure 3-3: Relationships Among Key Performance Factors
41 Figure 3-4: Example of a Criticality Matrix for Diesel Multiple Unit Vehicle
Systems
42 Figure 3-5: Share of Train Door Failures by Subsystem
43 Figure 3-6: Maintenance Approach Decision-Making Grid
44 Figure 3-7: Use RCM to Address Reliability Issues
44 Figure 3-8: Use TPM to Address Maintainability Issues
45 Figure 3-9: Cost Implications of Poor Railcar Reliability
48 Figure 3-10: Overview of the RCM Process
50 Figure 3-11: Functional Block Diagram for an EMU Electric Traction System
52 Figure 3-12: Sample Table for Organizing a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis
54 Figure 3-13: Summary of RCM Decision Logic
63 Figure 3-14: Overview of the Total Productive Maintenance Approach
68 Figure 3-15: Example Process Map for Vehicle Maintenance
87 Figure 3-16: Barriers to Mechanics’ Skill Development
100 Figure 4-1: Railcar Maintenance Role in an Agency’s Planning Processes
102 Figure 4-2: Lifecycle Management Activities

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION vi

 117 Figure 5-1: Performance Management at Various Organizational Levels
129 Figure 5-2: Sample Decision Logic Applied to Monitoring Key Performance
Indicators
130 Figure 5-3: Los Angeles Metro Rail – Top Incident Categories, March 2012
131 Figure 5-4: Los Angeles Metro Rail – Repeat Failures, March 2012
139 Figure 6-1: Identification of Training Needs
146 Figure 6-2: Excerpt from APTA’s Rail Vehicles Maintenance Training
Standards
168 Figure 7-1: Excerpt from APTA’s Light Rail Vehicle RFP Procurement
Guideline
177 Figure 7-2: Responsibilities of Railcar Maintenance and Materials
Management Departments
183 Figure 7-3: Conceptual Enterprise Asset Management System Architecture
185 Figure 7-4: Example Asset Hierarchy for a Light Rail Vehicle

LIST OF TABLES

6 Table 1-1: NTD Rail System Categories

7 Table 1-2: Composition of Active Railcar Fleet in the United States, 2011
7 Ta ble 1-3: Summary of Active Railcar Fleet in the United States by Agency, 2011
18 Table 1-4: Railcar Maintenance Management Benefits
19 Table 1-5: Typical Transit Agency Railcar Maintenance Management Challenges
21 Table 1-6: Sections Overview
23 Table 2-1: Primary Maintenance Strategies
29 Table 2-2: Approaches to Contracting Railcar Maintenance
98 Table 4-1: Key Planning Processes For Railcar Maintenance
104 Table 4-2: Lifecycle Management Plan Contents
116 Table 5-1: Relationship Between Department Goals and Performance Factors
122 Table 5-2: Typical Data Sources for Monitoring Railcar Maintenance Activities
132 Table 5-3: Example Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION vii

PREFACE
The federal government has identified preserving and improving the condition of
transit rail assets, including railcars, as a critical requirement to maintain the safety
and performance of major transit systems (1) and has prioritized this objective
in the most recent transportation appropriations legislation, Moving Ahead for
Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21). The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)
has reported that there is an estimated backlog of $50 to $80 billion in deferred
maintenance and replacement needs for the United States’ public transit assets,
of which the great majority is rail-related (2). Moreover, 25 percent of national
rail transit assets, including rolling stock, were in marginal or poor condition.
The federal government has provided funding for the purchase of 66 percent
of the active transit railcar fleet1 and therefore has a strong interest in ensuring
that these assets are well maintained and reach their planned service lives while
meeting safety, performance, and cost-effectiveness goals.

Improvement in railcar fleet availability, reliability, condition, and cost requires a whole
lifecycle management perspective. As stated in the FTA Asset Management Guide:

Transit asset management is a strategic and systematic process

through which an organization procures, operates, maintains,
rehabilitates, and replaces transit assets to manage their
performance, risks, and costs over their lifecycle to provide
safe, cost-effective, and reliable service to current and future
customers.” (3)

A transit agency’s railcar maintenance department is typically responsible for

carrying out the majority of lifecycle management activities for the railcar fleet
and is involved every aspect of a vehicle’s lifecycle. For instance, the railcar
maintenance department provides oversight of and input to the design and
procurement processes to ensure the reliability and maintainability of the railcar’s
design and the quality of its manufacture. Once the fleet enters service, the
railcar maintenance department is responsible for the selection cost-effective
maintenance strategies, workforce development and maintenance planning,
performance monitoring, and ongoing performance improvement. Moreover, fleet
maintenance is a major cost center for transit agencies, typically making up 20
percent of the operating budget (4).

To advance the effectiveness of the transit industry’s railcar maintenance

practices, this report presents the results from research and assessment of the
state-of-the-practice. It provides a primer for maintenance managers to improve
their control over railcar lifecycle costs while also raising service quality. To
accomplish this, the report:

Based on 2011 NTD data.

1

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION viii

 PREFACE

• Outlines the challenges the industry faces and the benefits of improving an
agency’s railcar maintenance management practices
• Introduces various railcar maintenance management approaches and
improvement strategies, when they are best utilized, and how they can drive
ongoing performance improvement for the railcar fleet
• Describes the key planning activities that railcar maintenance managers

employ to support high quality fleet management

• Outlines how railcar maintenance managers can use performance measures
that link maintenance decisions to the railcar’s overall lifecycle management
• Presents how maintenance managers can develop and maintain a productive,
motivated, and engaged workforce focused on quality and continuous
improvement
• Describes how maintenance managers can help ensure the effectiveness of
supporting business processes

This report presents accessible lessons-learned based on research into

“hands-on” experience related to all aspects of railcar maintenance management.
The report includes examples of practices that agencies have successfully applied
and is intended to provide practical guidance for transit agencies interested in
improving their railcar maintenance performance. The audience for this report
is any person with a leadership position in the railcar maintenance function or
anyone who is interested in a broader understanding of contemporary practices
and issues involved in the management of railcar maintenance.

Finally, the Parsons Brinckerhoff team is grateful to the transit agency managers
that spent their time providing substantive input and who reviewed draft material.
Their input and collaboration have made this a more valuable document.

Sources
1. Government Accountability Office. 2011. FTA programs are helping address
transit agencies' safety challenges, but improved performance goals and
measures could better focus efforts. Report to the Committee on Banking,
Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Accountability Office, January 31.
2. U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration. 2010.
2010 National State of Good Repair Assessment. Washington, DC: Federal
Transit Administration, June.
3. Rose, David, et al. 2013. Asset Management Guide. Washington: U.S.

Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration,.

4. Giacobbe, Robert. 2013. Is public transit ready for reliability-centered

maintenance? 2013 APTA Rail Conference. Philadelphia, PA: American Public
Transportation Association, June 4.

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This report could not have been developed without the invaluable input from
many colleagues and friends throughout the transit industry. Special thanks go
out to managers and maintenance managers at the following agencies:

• Bay Area Rapid Transit District

• Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Authority
• Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• MTA Long Island Railroad
• MTA Metro-North Railroad

ABSTRACT
This report surveys the state-of-practice of transit railcar maintenance
management and fleet management practices. It emphasizes a lifecycle
management approach to fleet management. It also emphasizes the role of
performance improvement programs and introduces Reliability-Centered
Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance as key examples of performance
improvement approaches. The report also covers planning and performance
measurement for rail fleet maintenance, as well as the role of supporting business
processes and systems in railcar maintenance, including new vehicle procurement,
facility upgrades, maintenance information systems, and purchasing and materials
management.

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION x

EXECUTIVE
This research report is intended to advance the effectiveness of the transit
SUMMARY
industry’s railcar maintenance practices through improved management. It
presents the results of research and transit agency interviews regarding the state
of the practice in railcar maintenance management in the United States transit
rail industry, as well as internationally. It covers strategies and case studies that
transit agency railcar maintenance departments can apply to better manage
railcar lifecycle costs, risks, and performance.

The report will be of value to agency staff new to railcar maintenance, to

railcar maintenance staff new to management, and to railcar maintenance staff
interested in performance improvement practices. It provides an introduction
to key management concepts and processes in railcar maintenance. The report
builds on the lifecycle management framework outlined in the FTA’s Transit
Asset Management Guide and Asset Class Supplement (1). The Guide offers specific
approaches to support short-term performance improvement and to lay the
foundation for the long-term success of a transit agency’s railcar maintenance
program.

Railcar Lifecycle Management

Effective lifecycle management drives successful service delivery and financial
performance by minimizing the cost to procure, operate, maintain, rehabilitate,
and replace an asset while meeting or exceeding established performance
commitments for both the asset and the transit system as a whole. As shown in
Figure ES-1, the railcar maintenance department should be involved in all aspects
of a railcar’s lifecycle to achieve the desired fleet performance.2 For example,
during the design/procurement lifecycle stage, requirements and design review by
the railcar maintenance department can help ensure new vehicles are designed
to be cost-effectively maintained. Once new railcars enter service, the agency’s
railcar maintenance department is responsible for ongoing preventive and
reactive maintenance and rehabilitations. The department’s maintenance program
ensures the transit agency can meet its ongoing fleet safety, availability, service
quality, and cost goals. Only through sustaining a quality maintenance program
can the agency manage the fleet to minimize lifecycle costs while ensuring quality
transit service for customers.

2
FTA’s Asset Management Guide (1) covers best practices for managing transit assets across the lifecycle.

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 1

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Figure ES-1
Railcar
Maintenance
Department
Lifecycle
Management
Responsibilities

This report expands on the summary of railcar lifecycle management practices

provided in the FTA’s Asset Management Guide Supplement (1) with a focus on the
“maintain/monitor” step within the railcar lifecycle. The report also covers the
railcar maintenance department’s role in each of the other steps of the vehicle
lifecycle. The whole lifecycle perspective is a critical component of effective
railcar maintenance management. Railcar maintenance managers fulfill the role
of “owners” of the rail fleet assets, with final responsibility for rolling stock
availability, reliability, cost, and passenger comfort.

Research Approach
This report incorporates findings from a literature review and an analysis of
NTD 2011 data, as well as examples compiled directly from the selected transit
agencies around the United States. The transit agency examples are incorporated
in the report to demonstrate how and where particular maintenance
management concepts and strategies have been deployed effectively. When
possible, the case studies highlight strategies employed, outcomes, and lessons
learned, such as risks and success factors.

Sections Overview
The following describes the objectives and contents of each section:

Section 1: Introduction to Railcar Maintenance Management – This

section describes railcar lifecycle management activities and emphasizes the
link between decisions across the lifecycle and maintenance requirements. It
describes the state of the national transit rail fleet and industry, the challenges
the industry faces related to fleet management, and the benefits of improving an
agency’s railcar maintenance management practices.

Section 2: Overview of Railcar Maintenance – This section introduces

contemporary railcar maintenance management strategies in more detail,
including various types of preventive maintenance. The section describes how
each maintenance strategy is best applied and its role in the overall maintenance

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 2

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

program. It also discusses alternative business models for railcar maintenance,

including contracted maintenance.

Section 3: Improvement Strategies – This section focuses on performance

improvement strategies for railcar maintenance. It addresses the identification
of opportunity areas for improvement. The section introduces two major
performance improvement frameworks—Reliability-Centered Maintenance
and Total Productive Maintenance, together with supporting analysis and
improvement methods. The section also explains how and when to use these
management approaches to drive ongoing performance improvement of the
railcar fleet.

Section 4: Planning Processes – This section describes the planning activities

that railcar maintenance managers should be supporting at all levels of an
agency—from agency-wide strategic planning to capital planning to day-to-day
maintenance staff work plans. This section covers the importance of planning
processes for the direction and implementation of the overall fleet maintenance
program and the ongoing performance and condition of the railcar fleet.

Section 5: Performance Measurement – This section describes how

railcar maintenance managers can use performance measurement to monitor
implementation of the maintenance program and align complex operations
with overall department and agency goals. The section covers how to select
performance measures, establish a baseline, communicate performance data, and
use performance measures to support decision-making.

Section 6: Workforce Training and Organizational Development – This

section discusses challenges related to management of the railcar maintenance
workforce and strategies and opportunities for improving workforce skills
and performance. It discusses state of the practice around training, knowledge
management, and creating a maintenance culture focused on productivity and quality.

Section 7: Supporting Processes and Systems – This section focuses on the

supporting processes and systems on which a railcar maintenance department
relies to effectively carry out its mission. Chief among these are the procurement,
maintenance facility improvement projects, materials management, and information
technology functions, which may be hosted in other departments but are integral
to the railcar maintenance program’s work. This section explores the role of each
of these functions in railcar maintenance and presents management strategies and
methods to ensure their effectiveness and support their improvement.

Sources
1. Rose, David, et al. 2013. Asset Management Guide. Washington: U.S.

Department of Transportation Federal Transit Administration.

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 3

 Introduction to Railcar

1
SECTION

Maintenance Management

This section describes railcar lifecycle management activities and emphasizes

the link between decisions across the lifecycle and maintenance requirements. It
describes the state of the national transit rail fleet and industry, the challenges
the industry faces related to fleet management, and the benefits of improving an
agency’s railcar maintenance management practices.

The transit industry in the U.S. today is devoting considerable management and
technical attention to improving service reliability and the customer experience.
The reliability and condition of railcars has a significant impact on the overall
customer experience (1),(2), as well as on fleet costs. The focus on service
quality and reliability occurs at a time when many transit agencies face increased
expectations from passengers and policy-makers for more business-like practices
and increased accountability for performance and costs. With the enactment of
MAP-21,3 safety and performance management reporting requirements have been
strengthened, and there is renewed industry focus on asset management, in part
spurred by the requirements to develop asset management plans.

Figure 1-1 outlines the railcar maintenance department’s role in the overall
agency’s business model. High-level planning processes determine the level of
service and fleet requirements. In support of these requirements, the railcar
maintenance department is responsible for the fleet’s lifecycle management—
including procurement, engineering, and maintenance—and its readiness for
revenue service. Through its stewardship of the fleet, the railcar maintenance
department is responsible for managing the fleet’s cost and performance.

Figure 1-1
Role of Railcar
Maintenance in Overall
Agency Business Model

3
http://www.fta.dot.gov/map21/, February, 2013.

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 4

 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION TO RAILCAR MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

Our research finds that best practice is to make investment decisions throughout
the railcar lifecycle that consider maintenance requirements and costs. This
approach depends on data-driven decision-making, improved integration across
maintenance and support functions, the engagement of the maintenance workforce
at all levels, and a focus on the customer experience, especially with respect to
railcar condition and performance.

The industry’s spotlight on improved asset management practices has maintenance

managers working to transition from a “find and fix” or “reactive” maintenance
mode to a “predict and prevent” or preventive maintenance mode. Reducing
reactive maintenance goes beyond merely following preventive maintenance
protocols and encompasses greater development and use of inspection techniques,
monitoring and diagnostics technologies, statistical analysis, and quality assurance
measures to improve preventive maintenance efficiency and effectiveness.

Maintenance management defined. In this report, “maintenance

management” refers to the planning, implementation, and oversight of railcar
maintenance, with an emphasis on a lifecycle management perspective. Maintenance
management involves strategies, methods, and approaches that can help the
agency to operate more efficiently and effectively within the constraints of the
transit environment. It covers both oversight and direction of railcar maintenance
processes and resources as well as interface with and support for other critical
agency processes—such as vehicle procurement, inventory management, and
information systems management—which contribute to the railcar maintenance
program’s overall performance and success. “Maintenance management,” when
referenced in this document, addresses how to apply the available resources most
productively. It does not refer to activities that address insufficient resources (e.g.,
lack of funding and staff) or inadequate facilities and equipment.

Maintenance managers play a critical role in railcar lifecycle management: they are
responsible for ensuring that their railcar fleet is maintained at a level that ensures safe,
reliable, and cost-effective operations. For some agencies, this responsibility falls under
the Chief Operating Officer or Chief Mechanical Officer; for others, it is a manager
position in the agency’s Engineering and/or Maintenance department. Depending on
the level of responsibility given to the maintenance manager, this position is often
responsible for supporting other aspects of the railcar’s lifecycle as well, including new
vehicle procurements and major rehabilitation programs. These upper managers—
together with the superintendents, supervisors, and foremen who support them—are
increasingly applying more sophisticated maintenance management strategies and
approaches to raise their operations’ productivity and improve work quality.

This section provides context for the rest of the research report. It surveys the
state of the U.S. transit industry’s railcar fleet, including its continued growth and
change in composition, as well as the increasing number of smaller transit rail
operators. The section then outlines the role of maintenance within the railcar

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 5

 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION TO RAILCAR MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

lifecycle. Next, the section presents the challenges railcar maintenance programs
face and the potential benefits associated with improved railcar maintenance
management. Finally, it provides an overview of the other report sections.

Railcar Vehicles in the

U.S. Transit Industry
Data from the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) NTD (NTD) shows that rail
transit is growing as a transportation mode in the United States, both as a result
of existing rail transit systems expanding and of transit agencies building new rail
transit systems. This section surveys these growth trends and other key trends in
the industry to provide context to the rest of this research report.

Transit railcars are defined in this report as fixed-guideway vehicles supporting

revenue service. These include locomotives, unpowered passenger cars, and
powered passenger cars. The latter railcar type is classified either as an electrical
multiple unit (EMU), diesel multiple unit (DMU), or hybrid multiple unit based on
its propulsion system.

Transit railcars differ not only based on their propulsion but also on the type of
transit system they serve. NTD classifies systems into commuter rail, heavy rail, light
rail, streetcar, and hybrid rail. Each of these systems is described in Table 1-1 below.
Table 1-1
NTD Rail System Categories
Applicable Vehicle
System Type Description
Types
Commuter Rail Fixed guideway rail service operating on either old freight railways, or Locomotives
on tracks that are shared with freight railways, Amtrak, or both. The Passenger coaches
service is characterized by relatively long distances between stops, for Diesel multiple units
service primarily connecting a central city with outlying suburbs and Electric multiple units
cities. The service usually has grade-crossings with roadways. Hybrid multiple units
Heavy Rail An electric railway that operates local service in exclusive right-of-way. Electric multiple units
The service is characterized by long trains of six to eight cars or more
and by relatively short distances between stops for local service within a
city and the immediate suburbs. The nation’s traditional subway systems
are classified as heavy rail.
Light Rail An electric railway that operates local service, at times in mixed traffic Electric multiple units
with road vehicles, or has grade crossings with roadways. The service Hybrid multiple units
is characterized by short trains of one to four cars and by relatively
short distances between stops for local service within a city and the
immediate suburbs.
Hybrid Rail Rail systems primarily operating routes on the National Rail System, but Diesel multiple units
not operating with the characteristics of commuter rail. Hybrid multiple units
Streetcar Rail systems operating routes predominantly on streets in mixed-traffic. Modern streetcars
This service typically operates with single-car or articulated trains Historic streetcars
powered by overhead catenaries and with frequent stops.
Source: NTD (3)

FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 6

 SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION TO RAILCAR MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT

The 2011 NTD reported that, there are 74 heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail,
streetcar, and hybrid rail transit systems in the United States, operated by 55 separate
transit agencies and together composing a national fleet of 20,684 active railcars in
Fiscal Year (FY) 2011.4 The active railcar fleet is composed of 54 percent heavy rail, 34
percent commuter rail, 10 percent light rail, and a small number of streetcar and hybrid
rail vehicles. Table 1-2 summarizes the nation’s active railcar fleet.

Table 1-2 Transit Mode

Revenue Vehicles Mean Mean Railcar
in Active Fleet Vehicle Age Capacity
Composition of Active
Railcar Fleet in the Heavy Rail 11,272 20 157
United States, 2011 Commuter Rail 7,121 20 181
Light Rail 1,975 16 142
Streetcar 272 425 78
Hybrid Rail 44 9 209
Source: NTD

The 10 largest transit agencies by fleet size reflect the diversity of the nation’s
active railcar fleet and operational practices. As shown in Table 1-3, the top 10
agencies in terms of fleet size serve 6 metropolitan areas and account for 79
percent of the nation’s active transit railcar fleet. Overall, average vehicle age
ranges from as old as 40 years (Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority) to
as new as one year (Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation).6
Table 1-3
Summary of Active Railcar Fleet in the United States by Agency, 2011
Average Total Vehicle Maintenance
Number
Agency Vehicle Maintenance Labor Hours
of Cars
Age7 Cost ($M)8 per Vehicle
MTA New York City Transit 6,282 18.0 $620.9 1,354
Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad
1,434 28.9 $123.8 1,516
Corporation (Metra)
New Jersey Transit Corporation 1,347 17.1 $217.3 2,081
MTA Long Island Rail Road 1,165 9.7 $332.1 3,475
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority 1,146 22.3 $162.2 1,012
Chicago Transit Authority 1,142 28.8 $88.9 1,068
Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company 1,137 20.2 $222.4 2,513
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority 1,108 21.5 $153.2 1,800
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority 907 28.2 $92.9 1,702
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District 668 13.7 $91.2 1,443
Source: NTD

4
Though catalogued in the NTD, railcars belonging to the Alaska Railroad are not included in this analysis as, at

present, their service more closely resembles intercity passenger rail rather than commuter rail or transit service.

5
Includes historic vehicles.

6
Note that several agencies also operate historic streetcars, some over a century old, which will never be

retired and, if included in the average age estimates, would skew them significantly.
7
In some cases, transit agencies have reported remanufactured or rehabilitated cars as new, leading to a lower

mean age calculation.

8
Vehicle maintenance costs are the sum of all NTD vehicle maintenance operating expense categories by transit system.

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Even within the top 10 agencies, there is dramatic variation in average vehicle
age and maintenance costs and maintenance labor hours per vehicle. Within
the NTD data, few variables explain more than a small portion of this variation.
Statistical analysis of NTD data conducted as part of this research finds that
the mean miles per vehicle and the rail transit mode offer some explanation
of the differences in agencies’ productivity (measured by maintenance labor
hours per vehicle), efficiency (measured by maintenance cost per vehicle),
and effectiveness (measured by mean distance between failures). As would
be expected, higher levels of railcar use (measured by vehicle miles) result in
higher maintenance costs, and the technological differences among the modes
are an obvious reason for the variation in performance by mode. However,
most variation in railcar maintenance performance among agencies appears to
be related to organizational factors not quantified in NTD rather than fleet
technology and use factors. This conclusion underscores the importance of
effective management of the railcar maintenance program, the subject of this
report.

Rail transit is growing as a mode, with the largest net additions

to the U.S. railcar fleet occurring in smaller transit agencies and
commuter, light rail, and streetcar services. Figure 1-2 shows the growth
in the national railcar fleet between 2001 and 2011 by mode, representing
an overall increase in fleet size of 16 percent. The greatest relative increase
was an 87 percent rise in the number of active light rail vehicles, whereas the
commuter rail fleet had the greatest absolute growth: an increase of 1,320
vehicles. Smaller transit agencies were responsible for a slight majority of the
total increase in the U.S. railcar fleet. While the 10 largest agencies added
nearly 1,400 vehicles, the remaining agencies added more than 1,500, increasing
their share of the national railcar fleet from less than 16 percent to nearly 21
percent. From 2001 to 2011, the number of U.S. transit agencies with passenger
rail operations grew from 44 to 55. These trends mean that the U.S. will have
an increasingly diverse transit rail fleet with respect to rail transit mode and
vehicle technology, distributed among a greater number of geographies. The
implication is that railcar procurements will be more numerous but smaller in
size. To sustain this growing fleet, U.S. transit agencies will need a concomitant
increase in resources dedicated to fleet management, including preventive and
corrective maintenance and rehabilitations.

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Figure 1-2
Growth in the Number
of U.S. Railcar Vehicles
(2001 to 2011)

Source: NTD

The U.S. transit railcar fleet will require significant and growing
investments in rehabilitation and replacement in the coming decades due
to its age and increased size. Figure 1-3 provides the age distribution of the transit
fleet by 10-year cohort. The average age of the U.S. transit agencies’ railcar vehicles
skews younger with most vehicles being less than 30 years old, which reflects the
fleet’s ongoing growth. The particularly large skew of the light rail and commuter rail
fleets toward younger vehicles reflects the higher than average growth rates in these
modes, while the heavy rail fleet has slower fleet growth and a flatter age distribution.
Of the vehicles that are more than 50 years old, these are mostly due to commuter
rail passenger coaches and historic streetcars. The larger size of younger age cohorts
underscores the need for growing investment levels in fleet maintenance, rehabilitation,
and replacement in the coming decades to sustain the national fleet.

Figure 1-3
Number of Active
Railcars in the United
States by Age Cohort
(2011)

Source: NTD

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The vast majority of railcars are owned outright by the transit agency
with a small proportion leased. Figure 1-4 shows the number of railcars in
the U.S. fleet by mode and ownership status. The majority of the U.S. transit
agencies’ railcar vehicles are owned outright. The only major exception is
2,351 heavy railcar vehicles (or 21% of all U.S. heavy rail vehicles). These are
considered to be “true leases,” which, as defined by the NTD, means that the
lease covers the total cost of the capital asset plus interest. At the end of the
lease the capital asset is still owned by the lessor (entity providing the capital
asset) rather than the transit agency. The low proportion of leased vehicles
indicates that U.S. transit agencies have not embraced some of the alternative
business models used in other countries to manage transit rail fleets, where
transit and intercity rail operators more commonly use a variety of lease
arrangements for their fleets (4),(5).

Figure 1-4
Number of Active
Railcars in the United
States by Ownership
Status (2011)

Source: NTD

The NTD provides the following definitions of the vehicle lease agreements
included in the previous figure:

Leases are payments for the use of capital assets not owned by your
transit agency. There can be different leasing arrangements involving:

Purchase lease agreements… are financing plans that enable your

transit agency to acquire (own) the capital asset at the end of the
lease, sometimes with an additional payment due. The property
covered by such leases may or may not have been recorded as
owned assets, either during or after the period of the lease, your

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transit agency's internal accounting records. If purchase leases have

not been capitalized in your transit agency's internal accounting
records, this category includes the lease payments for the purchase
lease agreement. If the lease has been capitalized in the internal
accounting records of your transit agency, you should report it as it
has been accounted for internally.

Related parties lease… where the terms and amount of payments

by your transit agency are substantially less than in a true lease
because your transit agency is related to the lessor. For example,
a transit agency may lease surplus equipment from another transit
agency or local government (3).

Outside of heavy rail systems, contracted maintenance is widely used, especially

by smaller transit rail systems. Overall, it is common for agencies to contract
out their maintenance. In nearly every case where a transit agency contracts
maintenance, it also contracts operations, often but not always to the same
contractor. All hybrid rail systems contracted maintenance, and 57 percent
commuter rail systems use contracted maintenance. Figure 1-5 shows the
percent of the fleet maintained by contractors by mode, and Figure 1-6 shows
the total number of vehicles maintained by contractors for each mode. In
absolute terms, commuter rail systems rely most on contracted maintenance,
accounting for 82 percent of the 1,942 railcars maintained by contractors and
17 of the 26 transit rail systems using contracted maintenance. Contracting
the vehicle maintenance of heavy rail, light rail, and streetcar vehicles is less
common. In part, these figures reflect the tendency of smaller agencies, which
represent more hybrid rail and commuter rail systems, to contract service. In
fact, contracted service negatively correlated with the size of the rail system’s
active fleet. Agencies with newer transit rail systems are also more likely to
contract for vehicle maintenance services.

Figure 1-5
Percent of Revenue
Vehicles Maintained by
Contractors (2011)

Source: NTD

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Figure 1-6
Total Number of
Revenue Vehicles
Maintained by
Contractors (2011)

Source: NTD

Introduction to Railcar Lifecycle

Management Activities
Similar to most transit assets, railcars follow a well-defined asset lifecycle.
As shown in Figure 1-7, railcar lifecycle management involves oversight and
coordination of the following activities: vehicle design and procurement, fleet
use and operation, fleet maintenance, monitoring, rehabilitation, and overhaul,
and, finally, vehicle disposal and replacement. The goal of lifecycle management
is to understand and minimize the total cost of ownership of an asset while still
meeting its performance requirements.

Figure 1-7
Railcar Lifecycle
Management Activities

The railcar maintenance department is typically the asset “owner” for rail
vehicles, meaning it oversees the rolling stock throughout its useful life. As
such, railcar maintenance managers should be responsible for lifecycle costs in
each phase of the railcar lifecycle, working across functions and with various

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stakeholders as necessary. Railcar maintenance managers are also responsible

for ensuring vehicles meet their expected performance in terms of reliability,
availability, condition, and safety.

Figure 1-8 provides a conceptual diagram of a rail vehicle’s typical lifecycle

activities and costs. While costs are most concentrated in the procurement
phase, the majority of lifecycle costs, including day-to-day maintenance,
rehabilitations, and capitalized maintenance, is incurred during the service life
of the vehicle. The lifecycle costs are a function of the railcar’s initial design and
production, its ongoing reliability and maintainability, and the capabilities of the
agency’s fleet maintenance facilities and workforce. Furthermore, a system’s
unique operating environment, including its right-of-way construction, weather
conditions, and intensity of passenger use, plays a significant role in determining
vehicle condition and maintenance needs and therefore fleet costs.

Figure 1-8
Conceptual Diagram of Light Rail Vehicles’ Lifecycle Costs

Note: This figure is based in part on cost data compiled from three U.S. light rail transit systems with similar fleets.

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The following paragraphs describe each stage of the railcar lifecycle, including its
implications for the maintenance department.

Design and Procurement: Railcar procurements are major capital programs

that require identification of funding needs and sources years in advance—both
because they require a significant investment and because program planning and
design usually begin several years in advance of the expected vehicle delivery
schedule. An agency will develop a comprehensive technical specification for the
procurement that can vary in detail and specificity depending on the size of the
agency and the vehicle purchase as well as the agency’s particular requirements and
customizations for the vehicles.

Large transit systems often replace large portions of their fleet at once, and small
rail transit systems may even replace their entire fleet through a single procurement.
Larger procurements benefit the transit agency because they allow economies of
scale for the purchase and because having fewer vehicle models in service at any given
time simplifies maintenance department operations and reduces overall costs. The
lumpiness of the initial purchase often carries on to successive lifecycle phases with
significant peaks in maintenance and capital costs for major rehabilitations. System
and service expansion are also typically associated with large new vehicle purchases,
which often also cover part of the system’s fleet renewal needs.

The procurement phase of a railcar’s lifecycle is a major determinant of the

fleet’s reliability and maintainability throughout its operational life. Therefore,
a whole lifecycle approach which includes the involvement of maintenance
staff in the design and procurement of railcars is critical. Figure 1-9 shows how
procurement decisions, especially early in the process, have a disproportionate
impact on lifecycle costs and highlights the importance of maintenance staff’s
close involvement in the procurement process. This report considers the role
of maintenance staff in vehicle procurements and the factors to be considered in
procurement to ensure the quality and maintainability of the new vehicles.

Figure 1-9
Level of Control Over
Costs Through the
Railcar Lifecycle

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Maintenance, Monitoring, and Minor Rehabilitation and Overhaul

Programs: A large portion of the railcar’s lifecycle cost is focused on
maintenance, monitoring, and minor rehabilitations. Once railcars are delivered,
they are maintained by the transit agency or a contractor in maintenance
facilities. Maintenance and minor rehabilitation activities include the following
types of maintenance:

• Reactive maintenance – addresses vehicle operating failures (for example,

an equipment malfunction or exogenous damage to the vehicle from
weather or a traffic incident) or faults identified as part of preventive
maintenance inspections. By its nature, reactive maintenance is unplanned
and is a major component of the increased costs, both direct and indirect,
associated with lower reliability.
• Preventive maintenance – is designed to maintain the condition and
reliability of rail vehicles and systems in order to avoid in-service failures
that disrupt service. Preventive maintenance is critical for managing the
lifecycle costs of vehicles. Preventive maintenance includes:

– Scheduled maintenance – preventive maintenance occurs at regular

intervals of use
– Predictive maintenance – preventive maintenance occurs based on
measured vehicle system condition or performance
– Proactive maintenance – maintenance staff works to identify and
mitigate or eliminate causes of vehicle system failures prior to failures
occurring

• Ongoing or “running” rehabilitation programs refer to more intensive

preventive maintenance activities that are capitalized because they include
a major rebuild, overhaul, or upgrade but that nevertheless can be
conducted on-site by maintenance staff and allow the vehicle to remain in
service.

Figure 1-10 shows how effective preventive maintenance improves reliability

and reduces reactive maintenance costs. Manufacturers provide guidelines for
preventive maintenance, which agencies tend to follow, and for a given railcar
vehicle type, maintenance practices are broadly shared across the industry.

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Figure 1-10
Impact of Effective
Preventive Maintenance
on Total Maintenance
Effort9

Maintenance managers are responsible for conducting the planning, performance

monitoring, and ongoing performance improvement to ensure the effectiveness
of their preventive maintenance program, maximize reliability, and minimize
levels of reactive maintenance. When a preventive maintenance program is
ineffective, whether because of poor design or implementation or lack of
resources, it can result in a downward spiral as more staff fall into a “find and fix”
mentality instead of proactively addressing maintenance issues before they result
in reliability issues. Various strategies and approaches for effectively managing
maintenance, emphasizing preventive maintenance and maintenance quality and
cost-effectiveness, are covered in Section 3.

Major Rehabilitation and Upgrade: Railcars undergo heavy use and

major mechanical stress from heavy weights operating at high speeds. Even a
highly effective preventive maintenance program cannot necessarily maintain
the condition of all vehicle systems and elements indefinitely. As core vehicle
elements, such as its body and frame, reach critical condition levels, it may be
necessary to conduct a major overhaul and rehabilitation program, taking vehicles
out of service to address these issues simultaneously and restore the vehicle’s
condition. As part of the rehabilitation program, it may also make economic
sense to overhaul other vehicle systems in less critical condition because of
lower costs. Rehabilitations also offer the opportunity to upgrade and replace
vehicle technologies systems as necessary and make improvements for passenger
comfort, safety, and satisfaction.

9
As an example of the implementation of a successful preventive maintenance program, the Bay Area Rapid
Transit District’s fleet Strategic Maintenance Program increased fleet reliability nearly 70 percent between
2005 and 2013 while reducing the number of mechanics and technicians more than 12 percent and reducing
fleet corrective maintenance to its lowest levels ever (6).

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In general, railcars receive one major rehabilitation at least halfway through its
useful life, restoring its condition and reliability to “like-new” levels. However,
in some cases, a transit agency may conduct multiple overhauls over the course
of a vehicle’s life. These can vary in scope and magnitude. The timing and scope
of midlife overhauls requires careful planning to maximize its cost-effectiveness
and ensure a sufficient number of spare vehicles remain available to maintain
service levels. Section2,”Vehicle Rehabilitation Programs,” covers rehabilitation
programs in more detail.

Disposal: Once a vehicle is no longer cost effective to maintain, no longer

meets safety standards, or has become obsolete and is no longer needed for
the agency’s spare fleet, it is ready for disposal. Agencies usually determine
disposal timing based on their need to minimize the risk of having insufficient
spare capacity. Railcar disposal typically involves resale through a competitive
bid or similar process to ensure compensation for the residual value of the
vehicles. Retired vehicles may be used by another agency or scrapped for
recycling. Through the disposal process, the agency must ensure it complies
with all lease, FTA, and environmental requirements.

Benefits of Improved Railcar

Maintenance Management
A high performance fleet maintenance program supports the delivery of quality,
reliable service for passengers. Effective maintenance management practices can
help improve rolling stock reliability, which in turns increases vehicle availability,
increases the fleet’s productivity, and allows the agency to operate with a lower
spare vehicle ratio. A high performance maintenance program reduces overall
railcar maintenance costs through better allocation of resources and more
efficient and effective maintenance processes. Finally, it sustains the useful life of
vehicles and reduces the long term capital costs of the fleet. Table 1-4 highlights
some of the key benefits associated with improved railcar maintenance
management activities.

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Table 1-4
Railcar Maintenance Management Benefits

Transit Agency
Asset Management Approach
Business Benefits
Improved customer • Reduces accident risk and improves safety
service • Reduces missed trips and in-service failures
• Improves on-time performance and vehicle condition and cleanliness
• Focuses performance and investments around customer-centered goals and metrics
Improved productivity • Improves vehicle maintainability and maintenance efficiency
and reduced costs • Improves vehicle reliability and availability and thereby reduces corrective maintenance costs
• Increases fleet productivity and vehicle useful life and thereby reduces the total number of
revenue vehicles needed (and associated capital costs) to provide the agency’s target level
of service
Optimized resource • Uses condition-based maintenance and improved diagnostics to better time and target
allocation maintenance and improve maintenance efficiency and effectiveness
• Better aligns spending with an agency’s goals and objectives to obtain the greatest return
from limited funds
• Uses maintenance planning to better allocate resources and manage lifecycle costs
• Ensures alignment between maintenance needs and labor, facilities, and other resources
• Incorporates lifecycle cost, risk, and performance trade-offs into procurement planning
and operations and maintenance budgeting
Improved stakeholder • Improves collaboration with upstream, downstream, and lateral stakeholders
communications • Fosters more focus on internal clients and end customers
• Provides stakeholders with more accurate and timely customer-centered performance
indicators

The Challenges the Industry Faces

with Railcar Maintenance
Management
Transit agencies face significant challenges with regard to railcar maintenance
management. Some challenges are related to equipment—ensuring the quality
of the vehicle technology and responding to changing maintenance needs
through the railcar lifecycle. These are addressed in Section 7 on new vehicle
procurements and in Section 3 on reliability-centered maintenance. Some of the
most critical challenges relate to the efficiency and effectiveness of the railcar
maintenance organization, including managing the maintenance workforce,
responding to evolving skill requirements, and adapting to new business models.
These challenges are addressed in Section 3 on total productive maintenance
and Section 6 on workforce management. Finally, many agencies face financial
challenges and customer and policy-maker expectations for improved
performance. Table 1-5 summarizes the research findings of this report—both
through literature review and interviews with agency staff—as five principal
challenges related to maintenance management. They represent an imperative
to seek improved maintenance efficiency as well as greater value from capital
investments, which the following sections of this report seek to address.

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Table 1-5
Typical Transit Agency Railcar Maintenance Management Challenges

Challenge Description
Workforce Without succession plans in place, many transit agencies face the ongoing risk of losing critical
Transitions maintenance knowledge and experience, for example, related to why certain procedures are in place,
how to use maintenance management IT tools, and how to manage the inventory for critical parts.
Ongoing Each new vehicle procurement results in an evolution in technology and a corresponding change
Technology in maintenance practices. New vehicle procurements require careful planning to ensure the
Advancement maintenance workforce is prepared to properly maintain the new fleet upon its arrival.
Stagnant As fleets age and are replaced, their maintenance needs continually evolve. It is critical to have a
Maintenance sustained commitment to performance at all levels of the maintenance organization and have in
Practices place effective performance improvement programs to respond to new challenges as they arise and
ensure the railcar maintenance department successfully fulfills its lifecycle management and fleet
performance responsibilities.
Deferred When capital and operations and maintenance funds face growing constraints, agencies may defer
Maintenance fleet replacements and preventive maintenance. Deferred maintenance and investment lead to
deteriorating reliability and can result in a more stressful environment focused on managing rising
levels of corrective maintenance and meeting fleet availability requirements.
Business Model As budgets have become leaner, transit agencies are increasingly adopting more diverse approaches
Changes to owning, operating, and maintaining their vehicles. Rail vehicles may be owned outright and
maintained in-house, or the vehicles may be leased and maintained by a third party, usually under
a performance-based contract. New business models require different management skill sets and
expertise to ensure their success.

Key Aspects of Improving

Railcar Maintenance Management
Improving railcar maintenance management is about having in place more
effective planning, information, and improvement processes to raise railcar
reliability, maintainability, availability, and quality of service and reduce railcar
lifecycle cost. This report emphasizes two complementary maintenance
improvement frameworks for lifecycle management and maintenance
implementation that have proven effective for rolling stock assets:

• Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM): a seven-step, engineering-driven

process focused on equipment performance that broadly seeks to understand
whether a vehicle system’s design is reliable and whether its prescribed
maintenance procedures are effective.
• Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): a human-focused improvement

approach centered on understanding whether maintenance procedures

are being performed efficiently and effectively with the goal of improving
overall service quality and cost-effectiveness through continuous incremental
improvements.

Each approach is easily adaptable to an agency’s specific context and challenges.

Together, the two approaches provide a comprehensive framework for

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addressing fleet performance improvement, which, even if not adopted directly,

can provide important lessons for railcar maintenance departments seeking to
implement effective performance improvement programs.

The remained of this report covers management practices to ensure the

effectiveness of maintenance planning and performance processes. The report
also addresses improvement strategies and methods focused on workforce
management as well as the department’s key supporting business processes,
including vehicle procurement, inventory management, and information
systems management. Figure 1-11 provides a framework for understanding the
relationship among these various management responsibilities in the context
of the department’s business model. Each element of the business model is
successively addressed in this report.

Figure 1-11
Railcar Maintenance
Business Model

The report first addresses maintenance implementation, followed by each

of the major management functions: planning and financial management,
performance management, and workforce management. The report concludes
with a section addressing the railcar maintenance department’s role in key
supporting functions: procurement, inventory management, and information
technology management. Table 1-6 highlights the critical management
responsibilities with respect to railcar maintenance and presents the key
performance improvement opportunities presented in each section.

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Table 1-6
Sections Overview

Maintenance Management Responsibility Performance Improvement Opportunity

Section 2 – Overview of Select an appropriate Understand the available maintenance options and their
Railcar Maintenance maintenance strategy appropriate application
Section 3 – Improvement Have in place processes for Implement Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and
Strategies continuous improvement Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) to improve maintenance
efficiency and effectiveness
Section 4 – Planning Plan the Implementation of Use lifecycle management planning and budget and work
Processes the Strategy planning processes to improve implementation of maintenance
strategies
Section 5 – Performance Monitor Implementation Review and update the performance management system
Measurement for Fleet Performance to better focus the maintenance organization and improve
Management communication and decision-making
Section 6 – Ensure the Workforce’s Better select, plan, and target trainings and move toward a
Workforce Training Effectiveness maintenance culture focused on customer service, quality, and
and Organizational continuous learning
Development

Sources
1. Van Loon, Ruben, Rietveld, Piet, and Brons, Martijn. 2011. Travel-time

reliability impacts on railway passenger demand: a revealed preference

analysis. Journal of Transport Geography 19: 917-925.

2. Wardman, Mark, and Whelan, Gerard. 2001, Valuation of improved railway

rolling stock: A review of the literature and new evidence. Transport Reviews:
A Transnational Transdisciplinary Journal 21: 415-447.
3. Federal Transit Administration. 2012. 2011 Annual Reporting Manual. NTD.
Washington, DC: Federal Transit Administration.
4. Sippel, Ludger, and Mayer, Thomas. 2012. Regional passenger rail transport
in Europe: An overview and comparison of organization and responsibilities.
Berlin, Germany: Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Aufgabenträger.
5. Butcher, Louise. 2012. Railways: Rolling stock. London, U.K.: House of

Commons Library, August 2.

6. Allen, Tamar. 2013. The BART story: Achieving reliability with an old fleet.
APTA Rail Conference. Philadelphia, PA: American Public Transportation
Association, June 3.

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2

SECTION

Maintenance
This section introduces contemporary railcar maintenance management strategies in
more detail, including various types of preventive maintenance. The section describes
how each maintenance strategy is best applied and its role in the overall maintenance
program. It also discusses alternative business models for railcar maintenance, including
contracted maintenance.

The primary objectives of the railcar maintenance department are the safety,
reliability, availability, and condition and comfort of the railcar fleet, with
consideration for vehicle lifecycle costs. An effective maintenance approach
applies an appropriate maintenance strategy or combination of strategies to each
vehicle system or sub-assembly, sub-system, and component to successfully meet
these objectives. This section describes the following primary considerations for
the selection of maintenance strategies:

• Available maintenance strategies and their appropriate deployment

• Planning an effective major rehabilitation program
• Common fleet maintenance outsourcing approaches
• Benefits of collaboration with railcar equipment manufacturers

These four areas provide an important basis for a railcar maintenance

department’s implementation of its fleet maintenance program and performance
improvement efforts.

The Spectrum of
Maintenance Strategies
The spectrum of maintenance strategies runs from low intensity – run-to­
failure and replace – to high intensity strategies focused on prevention, such as
predictive maintenance. This research report identifies six principal maintenance
strategies:

• No maintenance/run-to-failure: if the system or component fails, it is simply

replace
• Reactive maintenance: maintenance consists only of correcting failures as they
occur
• Scheduled maintenance: in addition to any reactive maintenance performed,
the system or component has a prescribed set of maintenance activities
performed at standard intervals

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• Predictive maintenance: in addition to any reactive or scheduled maintenance

performed, the system or component has a prescribed set of maintenance
activities performed based on its level of use, condition, and performance
• Proactive maintenance: in addition to the standard preventive maintenance
regime, maintenance staff actively seeks to address a system or component’s
failure causes
• Self-maintenance/design out maintenance: an engineering approach is used to
remove failure causes and reduce a system’s required maintenance

Table 2-1 provides further detail on each of these six principal maintenance strategies.

Table 2-1
Primary Maintenance Strategies

Maintenance
Description
Strategy
No Maintenance/ No cost-effective maintenance treatments exist for the asset, typically because it is either highly
Run-to-Failure reliable or has a low replacement cost and low criticality relative to the cost of preventive
maintenance or repair.
Reactive Reactive maintenance, also known as unscheduled or corrective maintenance, is conducted only in
Maintenance response to a fault or functional failure or an issue identified through an inspection. Typically the
system is (1) relatively reliable and failures are unusual and occur apparently randomly, (2) the time
and effort to repair are minimal, or (3) the system has low criticality, meaning its failure does not
significantly impact overall service delivery. Preventive maintenance is not cost-effective because
it has insufficient impact on the system’s reliability or because monitoring and inspections are too
costly.
Scheduled Maintenance occurs at established intervals – usually based on time, mileage, or another measure
Maintenance of use – that reduce the likelihood of an in-service failure. Through the examination of past failures
and adoption of industry practices, the maintenance program can establish preventive maintenance
practices for the timely replacement, overhaul, or remanufacture of components to reestablish
their performance and reliability. Original equipment manufacturers often specify their product’s
recommended maintenance interval and procedures.
Predictive Predictive maintenance uses condition and performance data for prognostics, better timing
Maintenance preventive maintenance while still maintaining acceptable reliability levels. Maintenance (and
sometimes inspection) schedules are based on the vehicle system’s historical condition and
performance data. Predictive maintenance may incur additional costs from inspection and testing of
systems, as well as ongoing data analysis. In a successful predictive maintenance program, reductions
in unnecessary maintenance and in-service failures should fully offset these costs.
Proactive This maintenance approach emphasizes ongoing improvement of maintenance processes. Proactive
Maintenance maintenance involves a particular focus on (1) maintenance quality and the implementation of
quality assurance and quality control measures and (2) modifications to maintenance and operating
procedures to mitigate conditions that lead to wear and failure. Proactive maintenance relies on
many of the improvement methods supporting the Total Productive Maintenance described in
Section 3. Proactive maintenance is a more intensive preventive maintenance approach and usually
focuses on high criticality assets that consume maintenance resources disproportionately.
Self-Maintenance/ Design out maintenance is the reengineering or modification of components to improve reliability
Design Out and maintainability. Self-maintenance is a related engineering approach to give systems the capability
Maintenance to actively manage their performance by responding to ongoing use and wear in order to better
signal potential or impending faults, avoid in-service failures, maintain reliability and performance,
and minimize maintenance. These strategies are most appropriate for critical vehicle systems with
intolerably poor reliability or maintainability.
Source: Lee and Wang (1)

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Figure 2-1 shows how the more intensive maintenance strategies are more
appropriately applied to critical systems, especially those with relatively poor
reliability and maintainability. Strategies toward the bottom of the graphic are
considered more intensive because they typically require more data collection
and analysis, more frequent intervention, more engineering support, greater
use of more highly skilled maintenance workers, and closer ongoing monitoring
of their effectiveness. Note that it is possible to apply any of the maintenance
strategies to any indenture level10: the railcar, a vehicle system or subassembly,
sub-system, or component (2).

Figure 2-1
Maintenance Strategy
Progression

Source: Adapted from Lee and Wang (1)

All six maintenance strategies are used by transit agencies in railcar

maintenance. Every railcar maintenance program commonly employs the
run-to-failure, reactive maintenance, and scheduled maintenance strategies.
Predictive and proactive maintenance remain emergent approaches because
their implementation represents more difficult challenges. Their use can
expected to spread as transit agencies increasingly have the expertise and
technology to support their implementation. Railcar manufacturers have
taken the lead in adding self-maintenance features to railcars and will likely
continue to add such features at a steady pace through successive generations
of vehicles. Figure 2-2 shows how common maintenance triggers lead to use of
each of the six strategies.

10
The indenture level of a system or component indicates where it falls in the hierarchy or organization of a
complex asset, starting with the vehicle level and typically ending with the lowest replaceable unit or lowest
maintainable unit.

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Figure 2-2
Common Railcar
Maintenance Triggers

Vehicle Rehabilitation Programs

Mid-life rehabilitation involves taking railcars out of service for the overhaul,
remanufacture, or upgrade of a substantial number of vehicle systems at once. It
is undertaken to restore vehicles to “like new” condition and performance and
to carry out major technology upgrades. Not all transit agencies conduct mid­
life rehabilitations, instead relying fully on their running rehabilitation program to
maintain the fleet’s condition and performance. A typical mid-life rehabilitation
program includes the following objectives:

• Address systems with poor reliability

• Improve maintainability
• Restore equipment condition
• Add new features to improve safety and performance
• Address other agency initiatives (regulatory compliance, coordinated upgrade
of systems, etc.)

The goal of rehabilitation programs is to manage rolling stock’s overall lifecycle

costs and ensure it reaches or exceeds its intended useful life.

Mid-life rehabilitations are often based on extensive input from the Reliability-
Centered Maintenance approach described in Section 3 to determine the

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scope of the program. The project team identifies a broad set of issues to
address, develops criticality scores to prioritize them, and then addresses the
set of issues most likely to improve cost-effectiveness or develops a scope
addressing as many of issues as possible within the project budget. In general,
rehabilitations provide an opportunity to carry out “condition-based” or
predictive heavy maintenance and major design-out maintenance projects.
These activities are not completed during the course of normal maintenance
operations because of one or more of the following factors:

• The maintenance facility lacks the equipment or capacity to carry them out.
• The activity requires special engineering and expertise to complete.
• The activity requires significant downtime for the vehicle and, therefore, is
cost-effective to complete only if other overhaul activities are completely
simultaneously.
• The need for the overhaul occurs rarely—only once or several times

through the railcar’s useful life.

MARTA’s railcar rehabilitation program beginning in 2003 provides an example

of the potential scope and goals of a mid-life rehabilitation program. MART’s
program focused explicitly on the goals of extended service life, improved
customer service, and improved reliability (3). A Maryland MTA midlife
rehabilitation program for its heavy rail fleet (beginning in the late 1990s)
included the upgrade of microprocessors used in the automatic train control
system. The upgrade improved maintainability by supporting interface with
a laptop for improved diagnostics and faster repair times. In response to
issues with the main convertors related to snow intrusion, the project team
developed a new convertor design to improve both performance and reliability.
Finally, the upgrade included a new floor material and public address system to
improve passenger comfort, safety, and experience (4).

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PATCO Carbody Condition and Overhaul

A major rehabilitation program can involve programmatic significant risks.
The Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO) initiated a major railcar
overhaul program beginning in the early 2000s. Inspections of the car bodies
in 2002-2003—some of which were reaching 40 years old—had revealed
some structural issues including cracking and areas of corrosion. The agency
determined that all of the structural issues could be addressed effectively
and that the overhaul remained more cost-effective relative to replacement.
However, it was not until the cars were fully stripped down that the project
team could verify the full extent of structural issues. Fortunately, the initial
inspection program had been sufficiently thorough that, while it had not been
able to map their full extent, it had successfully identified all the types of
structural issues. While additional issues such as asbestos-containing material
were identified as part of the full overhaul, the initial inspection process had
proven an effective risk management strategy. This experience underscores
the value of a initial inspection program to fully understand the issues
maintenance and condition issues facing the fleet and define in detail the
scope of the rehabilitation program before committing to it (10).

Rehabilitation programs face similar challenges to new vehicle procurements

(see Section 7) and can benefit from many of the procurement strategies and
approaches previously outlined in that section. These include:

• Extensive planning needed for successful program execution. Having in

place a strong program oversight function to guide the process is critical to
program success.
• Impact on vehicle availability. A successful rehabilitation program
minimizes vehicle downtime. Otherwise, the agency is faced with either
limiting service or maintaining a costly higher spare ratio, meaning a larger
fleet with a greater overall maintenance workload and higher overall
capital costs.

Many agencies are now successfully employing “running rehabilitations,” where

vehicles remain in revenue service and overhauls are either designed to be
completed in normal maintenance timeframes or else are completed for
particular vehicle sub-assemblies off-line while a replacement sub-assembly is
installed on the vehicle allowing it to continue in normal service (5), (6). If a fleet
has a broad distribution of accumulated mileage among its vehicles, the agency
can prioritize vehicles and run a low volume rehabilitation program – in some
cases overhauling just one or two vehicles at time.

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Applying Pareto Analysis to Planning Rehabilitations

Pareto analysis is a simple method for selecting a limited number of priority
issues to address. The raw data, such as number failures for a given vehicle
component or system, are ordered by descending magnitude (in this case,
frequency). Once this is charted as a cumulative distribution, it should become
clear that in most cases, a relatively small portion of the items (in this case,
vehicle components) are responsible for a disproportionate share of the
failures. Addressing these top “problem” systems will have the greatest impact
on overall vehicle reliability (12).

Pareto analysis is an effective first step in a reliability analysis and was

used to help direct engineering resources for the San Francisco Municipal
Transportation Agency’s first rehabilitation of its Breda light rail vehicle
fleet. Maintenance planners identify the systems requiring the majority of
maintenance resources because of frequent failures and high repair costs (9).

Outsourcing Railcar Maintenance

Most transit agencies find it cost-effective to use vendors for a variety of
specific maintenance activities. Railcar maintenance departments commonly use
two types of narrow equipment maintenance contracts:

• Ongoing warranty or service contracts with an original equipment

manufacturer (OEM) for the repair of vehicle components, usually with

repair off-site according to an agreed price list

• As-needed third party maintenance contracts for heavy or specialized

maintenance for which the agency lacks required maintenance equipment,
expertise, or capacity, usually with repair off-site on a time-and-materials
or similar cost basis

Warranty or service contracts with the OEM must typically be negotiated

as part of the original equipment procurement and then renewed at regular
intervals. Such contracts are especially valuable to help the railcar maintenance
department manage risk for high technology vehicle systems. Manufacturers
are increasing taking on lifecycle management roles. Most major passenger
railcar manufacturers now offer asset management services including mid­
life overhauls or fleet upgrades and modernization and ongoing maintenance
services, as well as asset management tools and special condition monitoring
equipment like wheel profile measurement and RFID tagging for component
traceability. Agencies can initiate a third-party maintenance contract at any
time as fleet needs and maintenance capabilities change. For both approaches,
transit agencies must carefully assess how the contract might affect vehicle
repair times and availability and have effective quality control measures to

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ensure the contract’s value. Third-party maintenance contractors can present

a particular risk with respect to fluctuating prices, availability, and service
quality, which can present an ongoing challenge for a transit agency’s railcar
maintenance managers. (Figure 2-3 details further advantages and disadvantages
of contracting maintenance.)

In an alternative approach, a large proportion of transit agencies, especially

smaller transit agencies and non-heavy rail systems, have opted to fully contract
out their fleet maintenance function. Fully contracting fleet maintenance is a
strategic decision that should be revisited within the context of periodic agency
strategic planning initiatives which review at the highest level the agency’s
service delivery strategy. Major vehicle procurements and system expansions
are also an opportunity to consider various maintenance contracting options
and evaluate their lifecycle cost implications. For instance, some vehicle lease
agreements leave responsibility for maintenance to the lessor, who then
contracts with the manufacturer or a third party maintenance contractor.
Three primary approaches exist for contracting maintenance operations and
these are described in Table 2-2.
Table 2-2
Approaches to Contracting Railcar Maintenance

Maintenance Contracting
Transit Agency Role Contractor Role Risk Transfer
Approach
1 – Prescriptive Contract Maintains all decision-making Provides the maintenance Agency transfers
control, including deciding resources and is responsible minimal risk
what must be maintained, for meeting a prescriptive
when, and how scope of work
2 – Partial Delegation Maintains ultimate Provides input into how, when, Agency transfers
responsibility for the asset; and what type of maintenance some risk
however, decision-making is is conducted.
shared with the contractor

3 – Full Delegation Purchases the service Accepts full responsibility for Agency transfers all
delivered by the asset (e.g., the asset risk
passenger seat-miles)

Note that compensations schemes under all three approaches may be

performance-based to various degrees. Differences in compensation schemes
represent different degrees of financial risk transfer as opposed to delegation
of management responsibility (7). Figure 2-3 elaborates some of the key
advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing railcar maintenance. Note that
most of the points in Figure 2-3 apply both to fully contracted maintenance and
narrow maintenance contracts.

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Figure 2-3
Advantages and
Disadvantages of
Contracting Railcar
Maintenance

Many of the disadvantages listed above increase with the specialization of the
maintenance services outsourced because the agency has access to fewer qualified
vendors. Transit agencies in smaller or more isolated markets often experience
these disadvantages more acutely (7).

Virgin Trains’ Railcar Lifecycle Management Model

As an example of the third approach, Virgin Trains contracted with a major rail
manufacturer to furnish new intercity passenger trains and provide maintenance
services for the company’s West Coast Mail Line operations in the United Kingdom.
The performance-based contract effectively passes all asset management
responsibilities to the vehicle manufacturer, which has led the manufacturer to
not only develop a variety of tactics to improve maintenance practices, but also to
focus more on maintainability in the vehicle design stage (11).

As it took over long-term maintenance, the manufacturer has increasingly used

performance-based contracts for its own suppliers. In many cases, these align
with the maintenance contract, passing through contract penalties to the supplier.
Such contracts are a major step away from traditional warranties. The company
has explicitly embraced a best-value approach with suppliers. The manufacturer
requires them to supply lifecycle costs and prove maintainability through
demonstrations of standard repair times. Suppliers also have more flexibility to
introduce changes post design with an eye to improving quality and value (11).

The manufacturer has implemented a program where members of the

train design team complete two week rotations through one of the railcar
maintenance facilities. The manufacturer assigned key maintenance staff in
each of the company’s five West Coast Main Line maintenance facilities to
various design support groups, each based in a particular facility, dedicated to
provide input and review on a specific train system, for example propulsion
FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION 30
systems. As a result, design engineers form an ongoing relationship with both
a particular design support group and a maintenance facility (11).

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Collaboration with Manufacturers

Collaboration with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can be a valuable
strategy to keep maintenance strategies up-to-date. To the extent possible,
agencies should take advantage of manufacturers’ support services. Information
from a manufacturer can provide documentation for maintenance procedures,
electronic training materials, updates to technical issues, notifications of safety
modifications, and other valuable information. The maintenance department
should identify the subset of manufacturers who cover critical systems,
subsystems, and components and establish a strategy for tracking information
that each manufacturer releases and for collaborating with the manufacturer.
By formalizing this process within the agency, there is a single point-of-contact
with the manufacturer and careful documentation of information received from
the manufacturer. In addition, a formal relationship and communication process
between the agency and the manufacturer can encourage the manufacturer
to proactively engage the agency. It can also facilitate an efficient flow of
information with agreed upon expectations as to the nature of reasonable
requests, appropriate level of detail and documentation, and responsiveness.
One railcar maintenance program can often benefit from a manufacturer’s
work with their full customer base (8). Furthermore, as part of the Reliability-
Centered Maintenance process, updates to preventive maintenance procedures
and design out maintenance efforts may require consultation or collaboration
with the OEM. The OEM’s concurrence on changes can be critical to address
liability issues related to safety (6).

Key Success Factors

Ø More intensive maintenance strategies are carefully targeted to
critical systems to better manage their maintainability and reliability.
Ø Fleet rehabilitation programs are designed to support minimization of
whole lifecycle costs.
Ø Major fleet rehabilitation programs have effective program oversight.
Ø The department has an established strategy for what maintenance
activities are outsourced and regularly reviews the strategy.
Ø The department has processes in place to collaborate with key
OEMs, especially on the ongoing update of preventive maintenance
procedures.

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Sources
1. Lee, Jay, and Wang, Haixia. 2008. New technologies for maintenance.

In Kobbacy, Khairy A. H., and Murthy, D. N. Prabhakar, Complex System

Maintenance Handbook. London: Springer-Verlag.

2. Marquez, Adolfo Crespo. 2007. The Maintenance Management Framework:

Models and Methods for Complex Systems Maintenance. London: Springer-

Verlag.

3. Carini, Raymond N., et al. 2006. MARTA's railcar rehabilitation program for
improved reliability and better customer service. Proceedings of the Joint Rail
Conference. Atlanta, GA: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, April 4-6.
4. Krishnamurthy, Balaji, et al. 2002. Metro railcar equipment upgrades. APTA
Commuter Rail/Transit Conference Proceedings. Baltimore, MD: American Public
Transportation Association, June 9-13.
5. Anderson, Gayle. 2012. No time for midlife crisis: Innovative rail maintenance
shop keeps Blue Line rail cars in shape. The Source (Los Angeles County
Metropolitan Transportation Authority official transportation blog). April 10.
http://thesource.metro.net/2012/04/10/no-time-for-midlife-crisis-innovative­
rail-maintenance-shop-keeps-blue-line-rail-cars-in-shape/.
6. Rowbottom, Tom, Sansone, Gene and Li, Janice. 2013. PATH industrial
engineering study overview. 2013 APTA Rail Conference. Philadelphia, PA:
American Public Transportation Association, June 4.
7. Murthy, D.N.P., and Jack, N. Maintenance outsourcing. In Kobbacy, K. A.,
and Murthy, D. N., Complex System Maintenance Handbook. London: Springer-
Verlag.
8. Diallo, Claver, Ait-Kadi, Daoud and Chelbi, Anis. 2009. Integrated spare
parts management. In Ben-Daya, Mohammed, et al., Handbook of Maintenance
Management and Engineering. London: Springer-Verlag.
9. Mirijello, Attilio. 2010. Reliability approach on light rail vehicle rehabilitation
plan. Facoltà di Ingegneria - Corso di Laurea Specialistica in Ingegneria
Meccanica. Universita di Pisa, December 20.
10. Janiszewski, John A., Shea, John, and Hoeffner, Philip. 2012. Condition of the
PATCO car body structures as determined during overhaul. APTA 2012 Rail
Conference. Dallas, TX: American Public Transportation Association, June 3-6.
11. Ivory, C. J., Thwaites, A., and Vaughan, R., Eindhoven Centre for Innovation
Studies, Eindhoven University of Technology. 2001. Eindhoven design for
maintainability: The innovation process in long-term engineering projects.
Future of Innovation Studies Conference, September 20–23.
12. Ben-Daya, Mohamed. 2009. Failure mode and effects analysis. In Ben-Daya,
Mohammed, et al., Handbook of Maintenance Management and Engineering.
London: Springer-Verlag.

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 Railcar Maintenance
3

SECTION

Improvement Strategies
This section focuses on performance improvement strategies for railcar maintenance.
It addresses the identification of opportunity areas for improvement. The section
introduces two major performance improvement frameworks—Reliability-Centered
Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance— together with supporting analysis
and improvement methods. The section also explains how and when to use these
management approaches to drive ongoing performance improvement of the railcar
fleet.

A key responsibility of railcar fleet managers is to ensure that the maintenance

program applies the strategies outlined in Section 2 appropriately and
implements them effectively. To accomplish these objectives, this section
focuses on two principal challenges:

1. The railcar maintenance department must select maintenance strategies

that maximize both the performance and availability of the railcar fleet
within the constraints of the agency’s available resources.
2. The railcar maintenance department must implement maintenance

strategies effectively to realize high quality outcomes and maximum

program efficiency.

Even when a railcar maintenance department is adhering to a well-established

preventive maintenance program executed by an experienced maintenance staff,
opportunities usually exist to improve the application of scheduled maintenance
and to extend the application of predictive and proactive maintenance
strategies. This section outlines how managers can focus their performance
improvement efforts and resources on critical systems and issues and select
and apply an appropriate maintenance improvement approach.

The two primary improvement approaches presented are Reliability-

Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Very
generally, RCM focuses more on improving equipment reliability through
the reengineering of equipment design and maintenance procedures (“Is the
maintenance strategy effective?”), while TPM is principally focused on improving
work quality and efficiency with an emphasis on engagement of the entire
maintenance workforce in the improvement process (“Is the maintenance
implementation effective?”). As such, RCM and TPM are complementary
approaches. Implemented together, they constitute a comprehensive approach
to fleet performance improvement and provide a helpful framework for
structuring fleet performance improvement program. The overall performance

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improvement process is summarized in Figure 3-1. Both RCM and TPM are
broadly applicable performance improvement approaches with substantial
latitude for adaptation to an agency’s specific purposes and can be implemented
in any transit fleet maintenance program.

Figure 3-1
Maintenance Strategy

Improvement Process

Identifying Target Vehicle

Systems for Improvement
The first step in improving the agency’s fleet maintenance strategies is to
identify target areas to focus improvement efforts and resources. A “criticality
analysis” can help a railcar maintenance department prioritize vehicle systems
for improvement and evaluate the effectiveness of the current maintenance
strategy for each vehicle system. This approach requires an evaluation of
each vehicle system’s (or component’s) contribution to operational goals—or
“business impacts”—against its maintainability and reliability. High criticality
systems have some combination major business impacts, poor reliability, and
poor maintainability. The criticality analysis results show which railcar systems
have the greatest potential for improvement and also support the selection of
an overall improvement approach.

The steps to complete a criticality analysis include:

1. Evaluate a vehicle system’s or component’s business impacts.

2. Establish overall maintenance effort required for the vehicle system or

component.

3. Use criticality analysis to select specific vehicle systems and components for
improvement.
4. Select a performance improvement approach.

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These steps are described in more detail below.

Evaluating the Business Impacts

of Vehicle Systems and Components
A vehicle system’s (or component’s) criticality is in part a reflection of its
contribution to operational goals, referred to as “business impacts.” For
railcars, the impact of a vehicle system’s failure on vehicle operation and
safety is the most important factor in determining the system’s business
impacts. Systems whose failure can result in a service interruption have
a higher criticality rating. Maintenance staff may find it useful to map key
failure modes for vehicle systems and subsystems to better understand
their operational impacts and help assess each asset’s business impacts.
As discussed in the call-out box below, functional mapping and functional
block diagrams are a valuable tool to support mapping of failure modes and
their business impacts.11 A vehicle system with major impact on other key
business goals—customer service, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
compliance, or fare collection, for example, may also receive consideration
for having more crucial business impacts. The easiest way to compare assets’
vehicle systems business impacts is to score every asset in each impact
category (service reliability, customer service, ADA compliance, etc.) and
then calculate an overall score with a simple weighted average. The overall
business impact of a vehicle system is typically recorded as an attribute in the
computerized maintenance management system12 (CMMS).

Functional mapping also supports other performance improvement methods discussed later in this section.
11

The electronic work order system that tracks all maintenance work by vehicle in terms of labor, materials,
12

work performed, etc.

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Functional Mapping
Functional block diagrams are a valuable tool for modeling complex vehicle systems and can support a
variety of valuable analyses, such as root cause failure analysis and criticality analysis, especially when
paired with data from the CMMS. Figure 3-2 shows a high-level functional mapping of a railcar. The arrows
represent interfaces between systems, where the arrow indicates a unidirectional relationship with the
upstream system effecting action in the downstream system. Functional block diagrams are a way to
visualize a vehicle’s components, functions, and interfaces, which can in turn help understand each system
or component’s business impacts. A more detailed functional mapping serves as the basis for describing and
understanding the most common or critical failure modes of a railcar. Ideally, the mapping occurs at the level
of the lowest maintainable (or replaceable) unit (1). The first step in a functional mapping of vehicles systems
is to categorize the various functions of each system. These include the following:

• Essential functions: If the system loses this functionality, the vehicle can no longer operate safely or
effectively. Examples: Passenger doors, braking system, propulsion system.
• Auxiliary functions: These functions are important for normal vehicle operation, but their deterioration
or failure does not necessitate immediate cessation of the vehicle’s operation. However, it may be
necessary to adjust the vehicle’s operation parameters or desirable to remove the vehicle from service.
Examples: Windshield wipers, suspension system, lighting, passenger information system.
• Protective functions: Systems with protective functions ensure safety of the vehicle, passengers, and the
surrounding environment. Examples: Horn, emergency braking system.
• Information functions: Systems with information functions collect data the vehicle’s operation,
performance, and condition. Examples: Onboard computer system, ATC equipment, oil condition sensor,
track geometry sensor.
• Interface functions: These functions cover the systems and components on the vehicle that serve to
integrate the various systems, subsystems, and functions of the vehicle. Interface functions include
connectors mediating physical interaction, isolators inhibiting interaction, and convertors which alter the
medium of a process. Examples: Electrical and communications wiring, insulation, pneumatic system,
transmission, control software.
• Superfluous functions: These functions are extraneous to the vehicle’s operation and serve secondary
vehicle functions. Examples: Seat cushion, fare collection equipment (8).

Functions can be either online or offline. Online functions are in continuous operation, such that failure is
immediately observable and evident or detectable. Offline functions have only intermittent operation, and so
their failure may be latent.

Each of the vehicle system functions described above can be defined by performance standards and
tolerances that characterize normal or acceptable functioning. When the system function operates outside of
these performance standards, it is considered a functional failure. Functional failures can be characterized as:

• Total loss of function: The system no longer provides the function at all and all downstream functions are
fully impacted.

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Functional Mapping (cont.)

• Partial loss of function: The vehicle system experiences a loss of quality of the function. The function can
continue to operate but not at an acceptable standard. Downstream functions are not necessarily fully
impacted.
• Incipient loss of function: The condition of the vehicle system is such that there is a high probability of
immediate failure if no preventive or corrective action is undertaken.
• Erroneous function: The vehicle system exhibits a control logic failure and has performed the wrong function.

A careful definition of a railcar model’s most common and critical functional failures provides a clear basis for
determining the business impact of each vehicle element to help prioritize maintenance resources. An asset
element’s business impact is often recorded as an attribute in the CMMS. Tracking various functional failure
types in the CMMS can support analysis of their effects, such as impact on service and average time and cost to
repair. Finally, functional mapping and characterization of functional failures can also serve as a basis to check
that preventive maintenance practices effectively address key failure modes. A failure mode is the root technical
issue that induces the functional failure. Together with asset criticality information, such information supports the
prioritization of function failures for follow-up root-cause failure analysis and Reliability-Centered Maintenance (9).

Figure 3-2
Functional Block
Diagram of a Diesel
Multiple Unit

Source: Adapted from Chater (1)

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Establishing Assets’ Overall Maintenance Effort

While a vehicle system’s business impacts are relatively fixed over time,
maintenance staff can exert significant control over the system’s maintainability
and reliability. The maintainability of a vehicle system is a function of the time
and resources necessary, on average, to carry out necessary maintenance on the
vehicle system, up to and including its periodic replacement. As maintainability
decreases (i.e., the system requires greater overall maintenance effort), the
vehicle system requires more maintenance resources to achieve the same
level of condition and performance. As a result, it becomes necessary to
deploy more intensive maintenance strategies to better manage the vehicle
system’s maintenance costs and performance. Because vehicle systems with
low maintainability can require disproportionate use of maintenance resources,
maintainability is usually an important factor in determining an asset’s criticality.

Two basic measures of maintainability include:

• Mean time to repair

• Mean cost to repair

Other measures related to maintainability include:

• Parts availability
• Need for special equipment
• Need for specialized labor resources

Measures of maintainability might also include the variability of a maintenance

procedure’s duration or the probability that the job’s duration will not exceed a
given threshold. Variations of this measure include a reliability threshold—the
percent of jobs completed within a given timeframe—and the expected duration.
A related and more general measure covers the total labor hours per job. Other
useful metrics include labor hours per vehicle operating hour, per vehicle per
month, and per vehicle distance (2).

Reliability determines asset performance through the frequency of failures. As

reliability deteriorates, the likelihood of service failures increases as do the
associated costs of failures: incident response and service restoration, decreased
customer satisfaction, and increased and more variable maintenance workload.
Together, reliability and maintainability measure the overall maintenance
effort for a given vehicle system. Criticality analysis is a simple analysis used to
understand the relative reliability and maintainability of individual vehicles and
vehicle systems, subsystems, and components, together with their business
impacts. The analysis provides a basis for prioritization of fleet maintenance
improvement efforts and improved maintenance strategy selection.

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Measuring the True Costs of Poor Reliability

The better that railcar maintenance managers can track the direct and indirect
costs of in-service failures, the better positioned they are to fully understand the
reliability component of vehicle maintenance costs.

• Direct impacts include the costs of incident response and vehicle repairs
(or reactive maintenance). It should be possible to track all direct costs
through the CMMS. It may be possible to create a standard management
report detailing direct costs by incident.
• Tracking indirect and external costs of service interruptions is more
difficult but is nonetheless important since these costs can help determine
of the value of measures to improve reliability.

– One important indirect cost of service disruptions is lost fare

revenue, which varies with the scale and length of the disruption,
since customers do not respond immediately. Transit rail systems
with electronic fare collection systems should be able to estimate
these impacts from fare collection data by comparing delay
incidents with normal service patterns.
– There are also the externalized costs of delay to passengers and
to other commuters. Major transit agencies may have a standard
methodology in place to track passenger delay as this is an
important performance measure. Total delay cost equals the total
passenger delay hours multiplied by the average passenger value
of time.
– It should also be noted that improvements in reliability can also
have an impact on overall ridership. While there are few estimates
of the effect of reliability on overall ridership levels, even a quite
small elasticity of ridership with respect to reliability could yield
important increases in ridership.

• Reliability–Maintainability relationship:
Maintainability × Reliability ≈ Overall Maintenance Effort

Reliability and maintainability are crucial performance measures not only because
they are controllable factors, but also because they roughly determine the
overall maintenance effort required for any given vehicle system, both in terms
of time and cost. Reliability and maintainability are also the two factors largely
determine fleet availability. Reliability and maintainability are not only related to
fleet availability, but also to maintenance cost-effectiveness and service quality,
all important measures for tracking a railcar maintenance program’s overall
performance. Figure 3-3 illustrates the relationship between reliability and

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maintainability and their relationship with RCM and TPM and other high-level
railcar maintenance department performance factors. The figure also emphasizes
the role of RCM and TPM in improving maintenance performance. Note that
RCM and TPM not only address reliability and maintainability, but also service
quality through the improvement of fleet reliability, condition, and comfort (1).
Together, RCM and TPM represent a comprehensive performance improvement
framework, addressing all aspects of maintenance and all key performance
factors. As such, these two performance improvement approaches can provide
important lessons for any railcar maintenance department’s performance
improvement program, even if they do not adopt RCM and TPM directly.

Figure 3-3
Relationships Among
Key Performance
Factors

Using Criticality Analysis to Select Target Assets

for Improvement
Once maintenance managers have determined each vehicle system’s business
impacts and overall maintenance effort, it is possible to conduct a basic criticality
analysis. A criticality matrix evaluates an asset’s maintainability and reliability
against its business impact score. This analysis can be used as the basis for
prioritizing improvement efforts and selecting an appropriate improvement
strategy.

Figure 3-4 shows a criticality matrix graphing business impact against overall
maintenance effort. The horizontal axis may be a measure of reliability,
maintainability, or an aggregate maintenance performance measure that combines
the two (e.g., the product of mean time to repair and mean distance between
failures). On the vertical axis, business impact may be a weighted average of
qualitative scores for safety impact, customer experience, and necessity of the
system for train operation. Based on the business impact and overall maintenance
effort measures, each vehicle system falls into one of five priority bands.

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Figure 3-4
Example of a
Criticality Matrix for
Diesel Multiple Unit
Vehicle Systems

Source: Adapted from Chater (1)

All vehicle systems falling into a particular band have comparable criticality with
respect to railcar maintenance operations. In general, systems in the upper-right
of the matrix—in this case, priority one systems—require a more intensive
maintenance strategy to better manage maintenance resources and improve
maintenance performance. These assets are generally the focus of the railcar
maintenance department’s major performance improvement effort and resources
because their improvement has the greatest impact on overall performance.
Over time, the maintenance program should work to move assets on the outer

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envelope—those with the least favorable combination of criticality and maintenance

performance—to the right. The most intensive maintenance strategies, proactive
maintenance and self-maintenance/design out maintenance, are designed to drive
these improvements.

Criticality analysis is also applicable to individual vehicle systems. For example, APTA’s
Rolling Stock Equipment Technical Forum’s Train Door Project used a criticality
analysis to identify the leading subsystems responsible for train door failures. The
analysis showed seven subsystems were responsible for the majority (55%) of failures,
as shown in Figure 3-5 (3). In the case of the APTA project, the criticality analysis
was intended to identify areas for collaboration among transit agencies, including
improvements of technical specifications and better outreach to manufacturers.

Figure 3-5
Share of Train Door
Failures by Subsystem

Source: Messina et al. (3)

Using a Decision-Making Grid to Better Apply

RCM and TPM
A decision-making grid translates the criticality analysis results into a
more specific course of action. Whereas a criticality analysis helps railcar
maintenance managers select which vehicle systems to target for improvement
to have the greatest overall impact on maintenance performance, a decision-
making grid helps to understand what improvement approach to undertake for
target assets. First, for each vehicle system, its maintainability and reliability are
scored into three tiers, high medium and low, usually measured with a standard
metric available through a CMMS query. Second, the reliability score is plotted
against the maintainability score so that each of the assets falls into one of nine
boxes on the decision grid, emphasizing a suggested maintenance strategy, as
shown in Figure 3-6 (4).

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Figure 3-6
Maintenance
Approach Decision-
Making Grid

Source: Adapted from Labib (5)

The grid provides a high-level assessment of what maintenance approach

might be most appropriate to the asset. The decision-making grid can be used
periodically to assess progress and reprioritize efforts. The following outlines
how to interpret the results of the decision-making grid:

• Assets located in the lower left-hand corner are the worst-performing

assets. The goal is to focus on the assets in the lower left and move
them up and to the right over time. For these worst-performing vehicles,
systems, and components, an engineering-based approach, such as design
out maintenance, can help address the fundamental issues that make these
assets both unreliable and difficult to maintain.
• When maintainability is low—conducting repairs and preventive
maintenance is costly—and reliability is relatively high, the value of
information increases, and “condition-based” or “predictive” maintenance
strategies help optimize the timing of maintenance to reduce unnecessary
maintenance effort without impacting reliability. On the other hand,
when reliability is low and maintainability is high, the issue is often the
effectiveness of maintenance. Proactive maintenance is a strategy to reduce
comebacks through many small improvements in maintenance quality, such
as upgrading mechanics’ skills and implementing additional quality assurance
measures.
• Assets located in the upper right-hand corner are assumed to be
performing relatively well. Operate to failure may be an acceptable
strategy. However, some level of preventive maintenance for more critical
assets is likely cost-effective. Overall scheduled maintenance is the default
maintenance strategy.
• When an asset is located on the left-hand side of the grid (reflecting
reliability issues), the Reliability-Centered Maintenance approach is likely
most effective (see Figure 3-7). RCM is described in detail in Section 3.

The specific tactics identified in the decision-making grid are covered in more
detail earlier in this section.

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Figure 3-7
Use RCM to Address
Reliability Issues

Source: Adapted from Labib (5)

• On the other hand, assets located in the bottom half of the grid (reflecting
maintainability issues) may benefit from a continuous improvement
approach, such as Total Productive Maintenance. As described in Section
3, TPM is designed to realize many incremental improvements in the fleet’s
maintainability over time (see Figure 3-8). Note that vehicle systems falling
into the lower left corner of the matrix would significantly benefit from the
application of RCM and TPM together.

Figure 3-8
Use TPM to Address
Maintainability Issues

Source: Adapted from Labib (5)

Reliability-Centered Maintenance
Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a maintenance performance
improvement approach initially developed in the 1960s by the U.S. aviation and
defense industries to create a framework for the rationalization and improvement
of maintenance activities. RCM focuses on investigating and addressing failure
modes identified as critical and establishing the best available maintenance
treatment for repair and, especially, preventive maintenance. It is designed to
improve overall railcar reliability and thereby improve financial performance in
several ways: reduced frequency of repairs, improved fleet productivity through
higher vehicle availability, and increased ridership through higher quality of service
(6). RCM is a critical strategy for maintenance programs looking to improve their
maintenance efficiency and has been successfully adopted by many transit rail and
intercity passenger rail agencies throughout the U.S. and the world.

Agencies with poor reliability can realize significant consequences, including

increased operations and maintenance costs and reduced ridership. Figure 3-9
shows the diverse direct and indirect consequences of poor reliability that can

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quickly propagate through the transit agency. As the figure suggests, the RCM
process can benefit not just fleet performance but also the agency’s overall
performance.

Figure 3-9
Cost Implications of
Poor Railcar Reliability

The primary goal of the RCM process is to reduce the likelihood of in-service
failures. Other goals include improved safety, maintenance cost-effectiveness,
and extension of asset useful lives. RCM helps to achieve these goals in five
ways:

• Identifying failure modes that have an immediate impact on the railcar’s

ability to deliver service as opposed to those failure modes which are
relatively less critical
• Developing or improving prognostics to better anticipate failures and

perform corrective maintenance before a failure occurs

• Developing or re-engineering maintenance procedures to detect and

eliminate failure causes before they happen

• Re-engineering vehicle systems or components to eliminate failure causes

• Developing or engineering measures to mitigate the impacts of a failure
mode

The RCM process can also contribute to maintainability—for instance,

by reducing the time for diagnostics or by improving the standardization
and documentation of repair procedures (7). However, the improvement
of maintainability is not usually a primary goal of RCM and is often better
addressed through Total Productive Maintenance, discussed in the next
section. This section describes how to plan for implementing the RCM process

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and then it outlines the steps and enabling factors that contribute to RCM’s
success.

RCM Project Teams

A successful RCM initiative depends on careful planning to ensure a focused
approach with sufficient supporting staff members and expertise, adequate
budget, and a defined schedule. Most of all, creating a strong team is a critical
success factor for the RCM initiative. The RCM implementation and oversight
teams need members both with experience in the RCM approach and with
strong institutional knowledge and technical expertise. The following reflects
key attributes for an RCM team:

• A new initiative usually requires effective leadership from a project

champion to ensure a clear vision and support from the broader

maintenance organization.

• Team members need sufficient availability to plan and implement the

approach and spend time on-site with the frontline workers. At least 25
percent—or more than one day per week—availability is recommended
for each team member, but team members with more critical
competencies may need to dedicate significantly more time to the initiative
than others. RCM implementation may require new staff—whether
permanent, temporary, or contracted—to manage the additional work
load.
• RCM project teams should incorporate team members with diverse
perspectives. The team members typically represent key maintenance
functions and skill sets, which may include project management, vehicle
engineering, maintenance planning/CMMS data analysis, maintenance
procedure, and quality assurance. It is critical that the team include
engineers and mechanics or technicians with deep experience with the
agency and its existing maintenance practices.
• Smaller project teams tend to work better—four to five members is
typically an effective team size. Additional stakeholders can be included at
key input and review points. A team leader oversees the team’s work and
facilitates planning and execution, especially coordination with functional
teams affected by the project and with the rest of the maintenance
department and its supporting functions like inventory management.
Project team members should have clear responsibilities with respect to
RCM.
• In smaller maintenance organizations that lack the same depth within
their workforces, key team members, such as the team leader and the
supporting engineer or analyst, may carry over between RCM projects.

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However, broad participation in the process is strongly encouraged.

Participation in RCM teams can help members’ overall job performance
by refocusing their work on core organization goals, giving them a
broader perspective on their role in the organization, and providing
them with new relationships and problem solving skills to deploy in their
primary position.
• Having in place a cross-functional team with rotating membership

helps promote information sharing and collaboration throughout the

maintenance organization and helps ensure the ongoing success of the

RCM program (7), (8), (9).

Once in place, the RCM team needs a clear decision making process to direct
the process and respond to unforeseen issues. Team members may experience
a learning curve in their new role, and, inevitably, staff may resist change and
default to the “old way of doing things.” A strong, transparent decision making
process prevents the process from falling victim to entrenched interests and
maintains the focus and momentum of implementation.

Some initial training in RCM is also often necessary to ensure a basic

foundation in the process. Having a core group of committed staff with
significant enthusiasm for and focus on RCM helps to motivate the whole
organization and sustain the momentum required for the approach to reach
maturity and success. Typically, the RCM approach is piloted in a focused area
so that a subset of participants have an opportunity to learn the process, adapt
it to the specific context of their organization, and work out any other issues
before adopting RCM for wider use (8).

The RCM Process

Figure 3-10 lays out the seven steps of the RCM process. Step 1 identifies the
scope of the RCM project. Steps 2 through 5 consist of identifying the key
causes of failures through a failure modes and effects analysis. Steps 6 and 7
are dedicated to identifying and developing the optimal improvement strategy
to reach the desired outcome: better vehicle reliability. Each step is described
in detail through the remainder of this section.

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Figure 3-10
Overview of RCM Process

Source: Adapted from multiple sources (7), (9), (10)

Step 1: Select Target Vehicle System

The first step in RCM is the determination of vehicle systems’ criticality
and prioritization of systems for improvement. The discussion of criticality
analysis earlier in this section can be applied directly to the RCM process.
Once priority assets have been selected, managers and engineers typically
review the target list and provide input, such as opinions regarding where an
RCM effort is most likely to succeed and the probable magnitude of potential
savings. The prioritization process also depends on an agency’s policies and
resources. For example, WMATA goes so far as to log and investigate each
service interruption; their maintenance department conducts a failure analysis
when a disruption is due to mechanical failure (11).

Maintenance managers are responsible for setting a provisional project

budget and timeline based on the expected benefits of the project. A
focused RCM project allows the maintenance department to carefully pilot
this improvement approach and adapt it to the department’s needs and
environment as necessary. Once the maintenance department has selected

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a particular vehicle system for improvement and determined RCM to be an

appropriate improvement approach, the project team must be formed to
implement the next steps of the RCM process.

Steps 2 through 5: Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

Once the project team is in place, the RCM process begins the
implementation of the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), which
consists of the following data collection steps:

2. Define the system’s functions.

3. Define its functional failures (how it failed to meet its intended
function).
4. Identify the failure modes (or specific technical issue) and associated
causes.
5. Identify the consequences of each failure mode.

In practice, the descriptions of the vehicle system functions and their

associated functional failures are carried out in tandem. The goal is to define
the system’s functions and functional failures at a detailed level. The earlier
description of Functional Mapping covers the general classifications of
functions and failures.

It can be helpful to create a functional block diagram for the entire vehicle
in order to identify higher level functional relationships between the target
vehicle system or subsystem and other vehicle systems. Because of the
inter-relation of vehicle systems, an RCM project may target a functional
failure that impacts multiple systems. The functional mapping process
must be comprehensive enough to provide the RCM team with a thorough
understanding of the target vehicle system. Once a system’s functional failures
have been established, the RCM team can prioritize particular failures for
further study and investigation of their specific failure modes. Figure 3-11
provides an example of a functional block diagram of an EMU’s propulsion
system, which shows the practical relationship between propulsion subs-
systems and helps understand how faults upstream can propagate into failures
in downstream systems.

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Figure 3-11
Functional Block Diagram for an EMU Electric Traction System

Source: Adapted from Sei, et al. (12)

It is important to be detailed in the description of failure modes. The team

can often identify most failure modes through a review of work orders in
the agency’s CMMS. Note that work orders frequently identify both failure
modes and functional failures, and it is important to differentiate between
the two. Also, failure data from the CMMS may not be at the appropriate
level of detail. In such cases, additional data collection may be necessary;
closer collaboration with front line workers may also be necessary to fully
understand the issue. When a failure mode cannot be fully characterized,
project team members can note these outstanding issues and investigate them
later in the RCM process as the need arises.

The final step of FMEA is to describe the consequences of each failure mode.
Analyzing the effects of failures helps to prioritize and focus RCM efforts.
For example, an articulated streetcar with two pantographs (such as in Figure
3-11) could experience a raise/lower malfunction on one pantograph. The
failure mode’s effect would the effect of reducing power to the streetcar by
50 percent, resulting in reduced operating speed. However, a control system
logic failure for the raise/lower function affecting both pantographs on the
vehicle would have the effect of cutting all power and would strand the

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vehicle and interrupt service throughout the line (13). The effects of a failure
fall into five main categories. These are:

• Evidence of the occurrence of the failure: this can include, among

others, automatic fault detection from sensors, perception of the train
operator of a functional failure, inspection by a mechanic or technician,
or perception of a downstream failure mode. It is important to carefully
document the expected evidence of the failure’s occurrence.
• Operational impacts: the RCM team must understand the failure mode’s
impact on the system’s and vehicle’s operation not only to prioritize the
failure mode but also understand the potential to manage the downstream
impacts on other railcar systems and on overall railcar operation.
• Physical damage: physical damage caused by the failure mode can have
implications for evidence of the failure, safety and environmental risks,
and operational impacts. It can also affect the repair requirements.
Addressing a failure mode can include mitigating such effects if the failure
itself cannot be prevented.
• Safety or environmental risks resulting from the failure: if such risks

are significant, the failure mode may receive a higher priority to be

addressed. They may also have immediate operational implications, and
it is important to check that they are effectively addressed by standard
operating procedure.
• Correction of the failure: documentation of the repairs and any other
steps needed to correct a failure provides a baseline to understand the
effectiveness of current maintenance procedures, the endurance of effects
from the failure. Understanding the correction of the failure also helps
quantify the railcar system’s maintainability for comparison with proposed
improvements (6).

In practice, two failure modes of a given system can lead to the same
functional failure. Figure 3-12 shows how the information collected can be
organized into a simple table. The RCM team may develop this template into
a more elaborate table to better document the detail of the FMEA. Note that
the information in this spreadsheet can used to conduct a criticality analysis
to prioritize failure modes to address. The criticality analysis follows the same
basic process as detailed in Section 3. In the case of FMEA, the decision is
simply whether to target a failure mode for further study by the RCM team
(6), (8), (9).

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Figure 3-12
Sample Table for
Organizing a Failure
Modes and Effects
Analysis

Source: Adapted from Marquez (6)

Data Collection for FMEA

RCM is a data-intensive performance improvement approach. Rail agencies like
British Rail first adapted RCM in the 1980s when new information technology
systems supporting operations began collecting higher quality performance
data for maintenance, supporting FMEA (49). Likewise, New York City Transit’s
Scheduled Maintenance System, which followed an approach related to RCM,
was made possible by advances in the agency’s CMMS (59). Transit agencies
should investigate opportunities to incorporate RCM functionality into the CMMS,
especially as part of a CMMS upgrade or replacement. Such features include
better tracking and documentation of failure modes and automated reports
identifying critical maintenance issues. The collection for RCM of data beyond
work histories is also important. For instance, when facing an acute maintenance
issue, transit agencies often collect the damaged or malfunctioning components
or subsystems for analysis by the vehicle engineering or RCM team. The RCM team
may also employ special inspections and tests of a sample of systems to gather
operation and condition data to better understand typical system performance
parameters. Design documents from the manufacturer and prior engineering
work are other important sources of information to support FMEA and may be
needed for to develop the maintenance approach to address critical failure modes.
In some cases, a failure mode may require collaboration with the departments
responsible electrical power distribution systems, automatic train control, or track
maintenance to fully understand and address the underlying failure causes.

RCM projects and other railcar engineering projects rely on detailed technical
documentation. Because such complex engineering needs, product lifecycle
management (PLM) is a critical information technology function for rolling stock
maintenance. While the CMMS maintains data on maintenance operations, PLM
covers technical documentation, including vehicle engineering. PLM functions
include tracking documentation for planning, design, and manufacture or
rehabilitation of vehicles, procurement, vehicle system modifications, ongoing
engineering support for maintenance, maintenance procedures, technical
documentation, and warranty management. PLM system functions may be
integrated into a single system or spread over multiple systems. The integration
of PLM functions with the CMMS/EAM provides better visibility into the use of
engineering resources, better access to documentation for both RCM project
teams and frontline personnel, and centralization of documentation for users.
There are significant advantages to having an integrated PLM system for the
entire agency, since vehicle engineering issues often overlap with ATC or track
engineering issues (55).
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Step 6: Failure Detection and Prevention/Mitigation

Once the FMEA is complete, the RCM project team is prepared to address
one or several failures modes. The RCM decision logic process is designed
to help the team identify, develop, and implement an appropriate preventive
maintenance strategy. The new preventive maintenance measure is typically
designed to do one or more of the following three things:

• Provide detection and testing or monitoring for a hidden failure.

• Provide detection or prediction of an impending failure (predictive or
condition-based maintenance) and better time preventive maintenance.
• Modify an existing preventive maintenance procedure or add a new

preventive maintenance procedure to more effectively restore the

performance and reliability of the vehicle system.

The preventive maintenance measure may accomplish these ends entirely or

only partially. It is important that the RCM project team model and test that
the proposed improvements to maintenance practices actually deliver the
anticipated benefit. RCM decision logic provides a clear decision framework
to guide the improvement process. RCM decision logic provides a process to
ensure the project team remains focused and explores the most promising
improvement options first before resorting to more intensive strategies.
Figure 3-13 provides a succinct summary of RCM decision logic. “Yes” options
in the tree represent the less intensive improvement strategy, which is
typically the more cost-effective option.

Addressing Hidden Failures

As indicated in the RCM logic tree, one often successful RCM engineering
strategy is to focus on hidden failures. If their latent state leads to additional
potential consequences, such as downstream failures, safety issues, or other
issues, then making the fault detectable can be a low-cost RCM strategy
to improve maintainability and availability. The call-out box on wayside
inspection technologies provides an example of the development of new
sensor and detection tools to identify hidden faults or failures.

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Figure 3-13
Summary of RCM Decision Logic

Source: Adapted from Barry (7)

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Wayside Inspection Technologies

Wayside data collection technologies may offer significant benefits to timing and
targeting maintenance in large fleet agencies. Wheel impact detectors, truck
performance detectors, acoustic bearing detectors, and wheel profile detectors
can gather data not available from onboard sensors and relay it to maintenance
staff in real-time in support of both reactive and predictive maintenance. Typically,
RFID identification tags on the train identify which bogie is being measured. The
data can be used to identify trucks which are not performing to standard and
are causing disproportionate track wear and pose a higher risk for in-service
failure and derailment. Essentially, the wayside detectors reveal otherwise hidden
functional failures (48). Because railcars may pass an inspection point multiple
times each day, the detector can collect information on each truck at a relatively
high rate and improve accuracy through multiple measurements. If a truck
consistently displays out of tolerance measurements, it is flagged for inspection.
Automatic wayside detectors can also serve to evaluate the efficacy of repairs by
providing “before and after” data to ensure maintenance effectiveness (51).

Metro-North Railroad installed such a system and used it to proactively identify

wheel faults. The system helped reduce the average wheel dynamic to static load
ratio from 2.5 to 1.8, resulting in slower track wear and savings to both vehicle
and track maintenance costs (56). WMATA conducted a test of a wayside truck
performance detector, measuring vertical and lateral forces to identify trucks that
do not perform well in curves. The project team used a simulation tool to predict
out of tolerance measurements and verified these measurements with empirical
data collected from the detector. The detector effectively identifies bogies in need
of corrective maintenance, such as suspension repair or wheel truing, and has
been used to test the railcar manufacturer’s adherence to steering requirements
on new vehicles as part of the reception process (51).

Predictive Maintenance
The RCM logic tree also shows RCM’s emphasis on predictive or condition-
based maintenance. A central principle of RCM is that inspection and testing
data can help model failure rates to better time and target both scheduled
and preventive maintenance. Whether a reliability model is simple or
sophisticated, the basic premise is to compare current measures of the railcar
system’s performance or condition with historical failure data to understand
the system’s prognosis—its current likelihood of failure—and to decide the
most appropriate maintenance action. The RCM team must develop this
understanding into a straightforward preventive maintenance procedure for
frontline workers with a clear inspection protocol, entry of inspection results
into the CMMS, and clear logic to determine the next maintenance steps. The
inspection data recorded in the CMMS can be used to review and update the
underlying reliability model.

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Reliability Models
Reliability analyses may use three basic approaches to forecast system performance:

• Model-based: Actual condition and performance is compared against the performance predicted by
a quantitative model of the decay process. The model focuses on understanding the causes of the
decay process. The model-based approach relies on deep understanding of the mechanics driving the
failure process. Model-based reliability analysis is often applied to electrical systems or to support
reengineering and design modifications.
• Data-driven: Empirical data is used to establish reliability models with reliance on the foundational
mechanics of wear and failure. The data-driven approach emphasizes outcomes or symptoms of
declining performance to construct a statistical model of decay or failure. Such empirical modeling may
use sophisticated statistical approaches such as neural networks or machine learning or simple, unfitted
historical experimental failure data to establish in and out of tolerance inspection or testing results and
associated empirical failure probabilities.
• Hybrid approach: a quantitative model is specified based on foundational principals and estimated using
empirical data.

Such models are used for prognostics to optimize the timing of maintenance. In practice, the hybrid and
data-driven approaches to reliability analysis are most common (54), (53).

Condition-based maintenance models provide conditional decay curves that may rely only on the current
condition of the asset or on both the level of use (e.g., total hours in service) and the current condition
together. The output of such a reliability model is a combined inspection and replacement policy based
on the current asset condition. Such probabilistic analysis usually relies on empirical curves rather
than a specified model like the Weibull distribution. A basic Weibull-distributed failure model is most
appropriately applied to components that fail based on the hours, miles in service, or other use-based
variables and therefore candidates for a scheduled maintenance strategy. On the other hand, condition-
based maintenance requires simultaneous consideration of both the current condition and level of
use experienced. The analyst groups condition ranges by probability of failure over several useful time
horizons, for instance the intervals between various kinds of inspections (15,000, 30,000, and 45,000
miles inspections). A particular condition corresponds to an empirical reliability level and an associated
maintenance action: (1) immediate preventive maintenance, (2) preventive maintenance scheduled for a
future inspection interval, or (3) inspection scheduled for a future inspection interval (58).

Failure trends and decay curves are useful for the selection of an appropriate maintenance strategy for a
particular component or vehicle system.

• Worst old: accelerating decrease in reliability past a certain level of use. Either scheduled or predictive
maintenance can be effective. More frequent inspections may be necessary past a certain age/use level.

• Bathtub: the system’s failure probability is highest at the beginning of the asset’s life and near the end.
Special early life maintenance, inspection, testing may be necessary. Problems are often associated with
production/procurement. After the introduction phase, maintenance tactics are the same as for Worst Old.

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Reliability Models (cont.)

• Slow aging: The system’s reliability deteriorates constantly with age. The system usually needs a periodic
rebuild or rehabilitation to restore condition. Preventive maintenance generally only slows the rate of
decline. Rehabilitations are timed based on inspection/observed condition.
• Best new: The system’s reliability deteriorates fastest during the initial phase of its life. Reliability is
generally not age-based after the initial phase, so scheduled maintenance is not very effective. Usually
run-to-failure assets depending on cost and maintainability.
• Constant: Reliability remains constant across the lifecycle. Like Best New, preventive maintenance is
generally ineffective. Failure is more or less random.
• Worst new: Like Bathtub, there is a period of lower reliability initially, followed by system stability, where
run-to-failure is an appropriate maintenance tactic (33).

Another challenge in instituting predictive maintenance is that it is sometimes

difficult to measure a vehicle system’s or component’s condition and potential for
failure directly. Engineers must instead use the data from existing sensors that
monitor associated components or functions, or they can conduct inspections
or tests of the system’s visible functions and parts. Such data may then be
correlated with failure modes and used for prediction. Data mining is emerging
as an approach to better leverage collection and use of sensor data to support
predictive maintenance and intelligent asset management systems. For example,
operating data records can be linked to signature patterns indicating a critical
threshold or event.

For high criticality assets, the value of condition information is much higher. With
railcars increasingly capable of communicating operating data continuously over
secure wireless networks, it is possible to monitor vehicles in real-time. Active
monitoring of critical systems such as propulsion, doors, or the pantograph
allows the operation control center to adjust vehicle operation in response to
a failure or impending failure, to direct vehicles for timely maintenance, and to
prevent in-service failures which are costly both to passengers and the agency
(14). For instance, vibration sensors can support detection of key failure modes
for gearboxes, and stress wave analysis can detect minor wheel flats that require
maintenance (1). Engineers have successfully installed vibration and acceleration
sensors in existing railcars to develop on-line condition monitoring of suspension
systems with the ability to distinguish key failure modes. Addressing suspension
issues more quickly reduces track maintenance costs, and improves safety by
reducing the likelihood of derailments, and improves customer comfort (15),
(16). Most railcar manufacturers already include electronic diagnostics covering
most critical railcar systems. While such systems are not fail-proof and help
improve overall reliability substantially, they can require maintenance and repair.
Mechanics need sufficient electronic knowledge to understand and repair

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these systems. They also need the computer skills to operate the laptop or
handheld computers necessary to download diagnostics equipment (17).

Condition-Based Replacement of Shock Absorbers

One example of condition-based maintenance is the testing of components before
their replacement. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) developed an effective
bench test for heavy rail shock absorbers. Heavy and light rail vehicles have shock
absorbers usually built by foreign suppliers that are extremely durable and typically
have a useful life between 20 to 30 years. CTA had previously replaced this
expensive component during the quarter life overhaul of railcar trucks, based on
OEM guidelines. However, these shock absorbers were never tested to determine
their performance and potential for reuse.

Seeing an opportunity for cost-savings through reuse of a costly component, CTA

developed a method to evaluate the condition of its shock absorbers, borrowed
from a practice used by professional auto racers. Racers test their shock absorbers
using special dynamometers to measure damping force so that they can meet
the requirements of each track where they race. CTA found a vendor that carried
a linear dynamometer that would help the agency test its shock absorbers. The
vendor tested six of CTA’s used shock absorbers and several new shock absorbers
with a dynamometer, comparing the damping rates of the two. The test found
that all six of the used shocks were still within the damping specifications for the
new shocks and could safely be reused until the next quarter-life overhaul. As
a result, CTA acquired its own linear dynamometer to conduct bench testing of
the shock absorbers on-site and was able to put the shock absorbers back into
service, saving up to $2,000 per truck. The agency normally replaces 1,200 shock
absorbers a year, costing almost $500,000. However, since purchasing the shock
dynamometer, CTA has achieved a 90 percent reuse rate on shock absorbers (45).

For critical vehicle systems with low failure rates, such as the car body,
qualitative condition assessments offer a more low-technology option for
predictive maintenance. The maintenance program sets a baseline policy to
repair assets once they reach a threshold on the qualitative scale. Over time,
the maintenance staff can validate and improve both the maintenance policy
and the condition rating procedure based on historical data from the CMMS.
Bay Area Rapid Transit District tracks fleet cleanliness through its quarterly
customer survey using a qualitative scale of 1 (“poor”) to 4 (“excellent”). The
performance measure has helped draw attention to the issue and supported
the decision to upgrade car interiors to both make cleaning easier and to
better meet passenger expectations about a clean environment. The fleet
maintenance program has also dedicated increased resources to clean car
interiors (18), (19).

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Scheduled Maintenance
In many cases, a vehicle system or component has a well-established failure
behavior where condition monitoring would not substantially change
the timing of maintenance. When condition monitoring cannot improve
maintenance decisions, predictive maintenance has less value and scheduled
maintenance is sufficient. Even in such a case, failure data are still important
to optimize the fixed maintenance interval. In practice however, optimizing
preventive maintenance schedules and inspections based on empirical data
and reliability models can present significant difficulties. For example, a rail
agency’s internal audit noted that the agency was not meeting its goals of oil
changes for light rail vehicles every 30,000 miles. The interval was considered
conservative and was used mostly as a benchmark. Changing the requirement
to the next scheduled longest interval, 60,000 miles, however, would make
the preventive maintenance schedule for oil changes too long. A 45,000 mile
interval just for oil changes was not practical because it did not coincide with
the normal preventive maintenance schedule. The anecdote highlights the
difficulty of balancing vehicle needs with maintenance capacity and the need
to carefully package preventive maintenance tasks to ensure adherence to
goals and performance (20).

One strategy to address this challenge is opportunistic maintenance: the

practice of packaging condition-based maintenance tasks together for
completion. Under opportunistic maintenance, skilled maintenance planners
use maintenance interval and condition information, staff requirements, and
task relationships (e.g., replacement of wheels allows access to the suspension
system) to create the ongoing railcar maintenance schedule. Optimization
techniques can help to both create specific schedules and general scheduling
rules to address the challenges of coordinating condition-based maintenance
of railcars (21). Maintenance planners use similar techniques to determine
what work items to include in a major overhaul such as a quarter-life, mid­
life, or other rehabilitation that takes a railcar out of service for a significant
period (for more on rehabilitation programs, see Section 2, “Vehicle
Rehabilitation Programs”).

Design Out Maintenance

For problems that cannot be remedied through either predictive maintenance
or scheduled maintenance, it may be necessary to redesign the equipment,
especially in the case of safety issues. Design out of maintenance is typically
a costly preventive maintenance option since it can require significant
engineering resources followed either by maintenance staff conducting
often costly modifications or by procurement of a replacement system or
component. Design out maintenance efforts are typically targeted at vehicle
systems with the most acute maintenance issues where there is a clear
business case (7).

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Self Maintenance
Self-maintenance or “e-maintenance” functionalities are intended to improve the maintainability of an asset
and reduce the need for intensive maintenance. The idea behind self-maintenance is that a system has the
capability to respond to ongoing use and wear in order to maintain reliability and performance and minimize
maintenance. Individual railcar systems increasingly incorporate self-maintenance features to expand their
tolerance levels, self-rectify after faults, and “auto tune” their operation under dynamic conditions (54). As
an example, electronic sensors control brake and clutch action. As pads and discs wear, the electronic control
compensates until the components reach a critical thickness. At that point, the electronic sensor signals a
fault code which the vehicle’s onboard system communicates to the operator and/or mechanic (17). Self-
maintenance functionalities include:

• Monitoring capability: real-time, sensor-based monitoring of performance and condition.

• Fault judging capability: real-time assessment of whether the system is operating within normal
parameters and performance.
• Diagnostics capability: the system has the ability to identify common and likely causes of abnormal
performance.
• Repair planning capability: the CMMS can use onboard systems data to identify likely repair actions and
provisionally schedule them.
• Adaptive control: the system has the ability to adjust operation to avoid impending failure and maintain at
least some level of performance.
• Self-learning and improvement: the system can use past data to update its control logic and further
improve reliability and performance (54).

Self-maintenance encompasses “smart assets” and “intelligent” information systems that support decision
analysis and automatic decision making. An example of an “intelligent” maintenance feature is the automatic
update of inspection schedules in the CMMS based on past inspection outcomes and automatically uploaded
vehicle diagnostics data. A “smart asset” feature would be for a system to adjust its operation when it
recognizes its typical operation could lead to an in-service failure. For example, an air-conditioning unit might
reduce output level after experiencing excessive loading and out-of-tolerance temperatures to forestall a failure
event (54). Real-time condition monitoring is another emerging self-maintenance feature. Common sensors
supporting real-time condition monitoring cover vibration, temperature, motion, acoustic emissions, ultrasonic
characteristics, oil and lubricant condition, electrical performance, and physical load and stress. These are
increasingly being deployed to monitor a variety of railcar systems (9).

For transit agencies to take more advantage of self-maintenance capabilities, railcar manufacturers will
need to continue to expand both data collection from and control capabilities for onboard systems. Better
interface with the onboard computer system improves data collection from existing onboard sensors for
maintenance engineers’ use. Many onboard systems simply communicate status and fault information to the
onboard computer. A system’s sensor may be measuring more complex data that can be useful for root cause
failure analysis (53). Virgin Trains, a British train operator, has worked with its operations contractor, a major
train manufacturer, to implement a system where maintenance personnel can remotely monitor the train’s
performance while it is in service. When the onboard computer system identifies a mechanical issue, the staff at
the maintenance depot can prepare for the repair in advance and minimize the train’s downtime (47). As part of
procurement requirements, transit agencies may wish to push self-maintenance features and to specify maximal
interface capability with system sensors to enable collection of such data or carry through of the base data to the
onboard computer.

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RCM at Amtrak
In 2005, Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General issued a report estimating that the passenger railroad
could save up to $100 million per year by adopting Reliability-Centered Maintenance throughout its
maintenance organization. In response, In July 2006, Amtrak established predictive maintenance as an
overall goal for the fleet maintenance organization, and moved to implement a RCM pilot program for
its Acela trains used in the Northeast Corridor where passenger growth was running into fleet capacity
constraints.

Through the RCM process, Amtrak reviewed and updated its three preventive maintenance cycles,
conducting maintenance effectiveness reviews and root cause failure analysis (of which FMEA is a
variant), and establishing a comprehensive condition-monitoring program. The railroad drew on cross-
functional stakeholders to complete the maintenance effectiveness reviews, involving mechanics,
operations staff, equipment engineers, equipment manufacturers, consultants, and facilitators. The
RCM program targeted systems based on safety, repair cost, and operational impact and an overall risk
assessment. The RCM program stressed the definition and implementation of condition inspections
for critical vehicles systems, the setting of component age limits at which their replacement was
mandatory, and the finding and correction of hidden functional failures before they could result in
in-service failures:

• Amtrak implemented remote condition monitoring of its locomotives to allow live monitoring by its
engineering staff.
• The root cause failure analysis lead to numerous component redesigns, such as the installation of
a new constant displacement pump and unloading circuit for the hydraulic system supporting the
train’s tilt system. Within a year, RCM efforts targeting the tilt system had reduced monthly delay
minutes by more than two thirds.
• One example of checking for hidden failures was the institution of a seasonal test of onboard HVAC
systems, checking for refrigerant levels in condensers as an early indication of mechanical issues.
• To improve maintainability, Amtrak’s RCM teams worked to better package maintenance and
overhaul tasks into four hour increments, which could be performed opportunistically during the
daily standard servicing and inspection window. As a result, fewer train sets need to be removed
from service for preventive maintenance, while preventive maintenance tasks are still completed
on schedule.

As a result of the program, Amtrak’s train availability in the Northeast Corridor improved from 14 train
sets to 16 train sets by 2008, permitting additional revenue runs and generating tens of millions of
dollars in additional fare revenue and improving the agency’s overall financial performance. In less than
a year, the Acela service went from eight train annulments per month to three annulments per month
(46), (52), (63), (61)

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Step 7: Implementation
The final step of the RCM process is the implementation of the proposed
improvements. Implementation typically involves the following success factors:

1. A clear definition of success for the project

2. Validation of the proposed improvement (usually through at least a month-

long pilot, though it depends on the historical failure interval of the target

vehicle system or component)

3. Full deployment of the improvement after successful pilots

4. Update of documentation and the CMMS to reflect changes in procedures

and engineering

The pilot and implementation plan also accounts for the commitment of other
resources supporting the effort such as frontline mechanics and technicians,
maintenance management staff, and vehicle engineers. These resources will
likely require additional training time and time to implement the proposed
improvement and specific elements of the RCM process. The implementation plan
addresses performance measurement and ensures that it is possible to collect
data to properly validate the improvements, including the qualitative feedback of
mechanics, technicians, and operators (7), (8).

Key Success Factors

Ø The department has a formal RCM process that covers selection of
projects, project team composition and organization, and standard
project steps and is updated regularly.
Ø The department has sufficient RCM project leaders in place with
experience and expertise in the RCM process.
Ø The department’s workforce is aware the need for and benefits of
RCM and supportive of the process.
Ø The department selects employees with appropriate skills and
provides appropriate training for RCM project teams.
Ø RCM project participants have a good understanding of the relative
criticality of vehicle assets and vehicle functions and failure modes.
Ø The department maintains high quality system- and component-level
historical performance data.
Ø There is a formal process in place to review and implement RCM
project recommendations.
Ø When deploying RCM in a new area, the department uses a pilot
project to introduce the process.

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Total Productive Maintenance

The Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) approach provides an effective complement
to the RCM approach. Whereas RCM focuses heavily on the technical elements of
maintenance, TPM is more concerned with the quality and efficiency of maintenance
processes and of their execution, with a particular focus on the human element of
maintenance. Unlike RCM, TPM is not focused on a single process or improvement
methodology. Rather, TPM is a management philosophy that sets forth a vision for
maintenance programs to realize continuous improvement in efficiency, quality,
and customer service (6). It is possible to apply TPM throughout the maintenance
organization, including supporting functions not necessarily directly managed by the
department, such as inventory management and information systems management.

Organizations across the world in diverse industries have adopted TPM and used it
with success. It fuses preventive maintenance methodologies with “lean production,”13
total quality management, and total employee involvement approaches pioneered
in Japanese manufacturing. As the name implies, Total Productive Maintenance
demands the involvement of the entire maintenance organization and focuses on
using maintenance resources efficiently and maximizing the up-time and effectiveness
of equipment, in this case the transit agency’s rolling stock (14), (22). For purposes of
implementation, Total Productive Maintenance can be organized around four pillars14
presented in Figure 3-14.

Figure 3-14
Overview of the
Total Productive
Maintenance
Approach

• TPM Pillar #1: Maintenance Prevention and Process Improvement –

Maximize equipment availability and productivity. Employees continually apply
and improve preventive maintenance practices to drive vehicles towards perfect
performance and maximum “uptime” or availability while minimizing costs.
Employees focus on continuous improvement of all maintenance processes to
realize many small, incremental improvements for significant overall benefit.

13
The formal Lean Six Sigma performance improvement approach, which has been implemented in transit
railcar maintenance programs, is well documented in A Transit Methodology Using Six Sigma for Heavy Rail
Maintenance Programs (30). Zwas provides a useful overview of the “Lean” approach in the transit maintenance
context (44).
Note that there is no standardized definition of TPM. The pillars presented here are based on a synthesis of
14

the literature tailored to the railcar maintenance context.

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• TPM Pillar #2: Customer and Quality Focus – Establish a maintenance

culture focused on quality and customers. Employees complete all tasks
with an eye to quality and the end user. Employees must feel ownership of
maintenance processes and accountable for meeting organizational goals and
supporting continuous improvement.
• TPM Pillar #3: Collaboration and Teamwork – Emphasize a team-
based approach to problem solving. Small, cross-functional teams can quickly
respond to minor issues, identify improvement opportunities, and implement
solutions which can then applied throughout the railcar maintenance
program. Encourage collaboration between management and frontline
workers to better align the maintenance program to pursue organizational
goals and deliver continuous improvement. When all railcar maintenance
workers have well aligned goals and incentives, they are better able to
improve performance.
• TPM Pillar #4: Continuous Learning – Support ongoing learning in
the maintenance program to ensure knowledge transfer, up-to-date skill sets,
and quick response to emerging skill gaps. An organization committed to its
employees’ ongoing learning supports a more engaged workforce with a stronger
commitment to quality and continuous improvement (23), (24), (25), (26).

For each of these pillars, TPM emphasizes the use of data to underwrite
performance improvement and decision-making. Performance measurement
ensures that TPM efforts are directed to the most critical and rewarding
areas, improvements can be effectively tested, and their success verified.
The following sections provide more detail on each of the four pillars and
introduce improvement methods and tactics to support each pillar. Together,
the TPM pillars and their supporting methods and tactics are an effective
way to implement proactive maintenance, both as a strategy for addressing
a specific target vehicle system and as a general maintenance strategy to
improve performance across the department. Under TPM, small performance
improvements across all functional teams and areas of maintenance contribute to
significant overall improvements in vehicle and fleet performance (23).

Pillar #1: Maintenance Prevention and Process Improvement

The first of TPM’s pillars is maintenance prevention and process improvement.
The key goals of this pillar are:

• Maximum fleet availability

• Zero breakdowns
• Continual cost reduction.

To achieve these goals, maintenance workers focus on optimization of

maintenance processes, standardization of maintenance procedures,
improvement of the quality and precision of maintenance work, and reduction of

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maintenance errors. Supporting tactics include autonomous maintenance, process

management, and management of human factors.15 Each of these tactics can
reduce the time and cost of repairs and improve the consistency and results of
maintenance procedures. As a result, they improve equipment availability through
better reliability and shorter mean time to repair. The following sections present
each of these strategies in detail.

Autonomous Maintenance
Under the TPM approach, management sets performance goals16 and places
responsibility for meeting those goals on frontline employees. Managers are
responsible for facilitating and coordinating improvement efforts, but frontline
workers play a major role in identifying improvement opportunities and
developing and testing improvements. Autonomous maintenance formalizes
this structure as the policy of the railcar maintenance department. Under
autonomous maintenance, frontline workers are explicitly held accountable for
identifying and addressing maintenance issues, even those do not fall under their
formal responsibility. For instance, even if a defect identified during a preventive
maintenance inspection is not part of the PM checklist, the mechanic is still
responsible for taking the time to log the defect and address the issue, and failure
to do so should be noted as part of quality assurance audits. Similarly, in the
course of any preventive maintenance or repair, mechanics take the opportunity
to carefully clean, lubricate, inspect, and adjust the system and its vicinity (27),
(6). If an issue is not part of an employee’s typical duties, the employee is still
responsible for initiating follow-up actions, such as referring the issue to the
appropriate coworker.

Autonomous maintenance emphasizes training frontline workers to identify quality

issues; for example, train operators and cleaners may be trained to check for
common issues and log them as defects. A general principle of TPM and autonomous
maintenance is that the first person who identifies an issue is responsible for
ensuring it is addressed, either by personally carrying out the corrective action or by
forwarding the defect to the appropriate specialist. With complex vehicle systems,
many defects do not correspond to well-established failure modes. Autonomous
maintenance emphasizes the ability of frontline workers to respond to unexpected
issues and minimize any potential disruption. When managers find that issues are
going unnoticed by frontline workers, autonomous maintenance requires that
they follow up with all employees with responsibility for the vehicle system or
maintenance process and resolve the issue (28), (6).

Note that any other performance improvement method or tactic that supports optimizing maintenance
15

processes, standardizing maintenance procedures, improving the quality and precision of maintenance work,
and reducing human errors in maintenance could be used to support this pillar of TPM.
16
Detailed discussion of performance management is in Section 5.

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Principles of Autonomous Maintenance

• Frontline workers ensure parts and systems are carefully cleaned as
part of routine maintenance.
• Frontline workers actively identify and repair or refer all defects,
especially in course of executing standard inspection protocols.
• Frontline workers receive cross-functional training to identify and
make common routine repairs for quality issues they might regularly
encounter in their daily work (e.g., cleaners addressing minor vandalism
and train operators logging maintenance issues for follow-up).
• Management collects and distributes performance data to help frontline
workers understand their performance and identify opportunities for
improvement.
• Management ensures standardization of operation and repair protocols
and checks and enforces compliance.
• Railcar maintenance staff collaborates with frontline workers in
transportation operations and other maintenance departments to
prevent the conditions that to lead to defects (e.g., educate train
operators and security about the costs of addressing vandalism or work
with rail maintenance staff to improve the rail-wheel interface) (6).

Rigid job descriptions can foster an attitude that anything falling outside a
worker’s job description is not his or her responsibility and hamper workers’
collaboration. Such inflexibility is particularly a problem for smaller and short-
staffed agencies. A heavy reliance on supervision can contribute to this problem
by discouraging employees from proactively addressing issues and creating an
adversarial relationship with managers (28). More flexible job descriptions,
together with more self-management by frontline teams, is an important
element of autonomous maintenance. The flat hierarchy of a self-managed team
encourages team members to hold each other accountable for their work.
When accountability is assigned to individuals and expectations are clearly
communicated, they are given a sense of responsibility to achieve results and help
employees understand how their actions can affect the overall workflow (29).
Attaching accountability to specific agency goals can improve motivation and
employee ownership of their work.17

Process Management
Process management is a second performance improvement method supporting
TPM’s maintenance prevention and process improvement pillar. Under process

Accountability, goals, and performance measures are covered in further detail in Section 5.
17

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management, a specific employee is designated as responsible for oversight

of each maintenance business process or a specific component of the
process. Examples of railcar maintenance business processes include a
standard preventive maintenance inspection carried out by mechanics,
an inventory process for component rebuilds, and an inspection protocol
carried out by railcar attendants when a vehicle enters the maintenance
yard. Process management encompasses tracking of the business process’s
resource use, ensuring the business process meets its objectives and
performance targets, and ensuring performance issues are identified and
addressed. The process management approach provides a framework for
both stability and continuous improvement of the process18 (24).

Designating a process owner ensures accountability for the process’s

performance. The process owner is responsible for proactively identifying
and addressing performance issues and leading performance improvement
efforts, including process re-engineering. The process owner collects
feedback from all workers touching the process and regularly verifies the
performance of the process through data collection and automatic reports
from the CMMS or other management control systems. Process owners
are also important internal resources, maintaining expertise critical to
maintenance operations.

Process diagrams are an important tool to support process management

and provide an official documentation of the process and to map its changes
over time. Process diagrams describe the actions at each step, including
any decision logic. A more detailed process diagram may also include the
business function of each step, the employee responsible for overseeing
each step, resource inputs and outputs, and performance measures for key
steps in the process (30), (24). Figure 3-15 provides an example of a higher
level process mapping for vehicle maintenance. Process diagrams can help
workers to visualize processes spatially and understand where issues are
arising.

18
Process management is an important part of the Lean Six Sigma performance improvement approach, which
has been implemented in transit railcar maintenance programs. Cook and Tyson-Wood describe the Lean Six
Sigma methodology and provide several rail transit case studies (30).

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Figure 3-15
Example Process Map for Vehicle Maintenance

Source: Adapted from Wilson, Dadie-Amoah, and Zhang (31)

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Collection of performance data is another critical step in process management.

Performance indicators can cover process inputs and outputs and measure
productivity, efficiency, and quality and effectiveness. The process owner should be
able to use performance indicators to effectively pinpoint performance issues and
trends for investigation (24). Fleet maintenance departments often use methods such
as statistical process control to monitor process performance and watch trends in
defects and understand when the frequency of defects rises above normal bounds.
Statistical process control uses CMMS quality control data to quickly identify when
a systemic quality issue arises (32). More information on the selection and use of
performance measures can be found in Section 4.

The process owner is responsible for overseeing any process re-engineering effort
to address process performance issues. The re-engineering of a business process
typically begins by defining the business requirements related to the process. Next,
the process and owner and the quality improvement team should analyze how
well the existing process fulfills those requirements. The team can either target
key steps for reengineering or develop an entirely new replacement process if the
existing process’s performance is sufficiently poor. Often, the spatial configuration,
process steps, and other elements of the process can be redesigned to improve
efficiency and quality. The process owner may select one or more methods to
support such business process re-engineering efforts. This report presents a variety
of such methods, which range from the informal—like quality circles19—to the more
analytical—like time studies20 (33).

Process management also supports TPM through the standardization of procedures.

When variations exist in the way workers carry out business processes, it can
lead to variations in process outputs, including in efficiency and quality. Process
management helps ensure that key business processes are carefully defined. Process
owners are responsible for verifying that employees show discipline in adhering to
the procedures defined for the process. Disciplined execution of process procedures
contributes to quality assurance (6). Under the TPM approach, standardization of
maintenance procedures can be a continuous process. Over time, procedures may
be documented in further detail to optimize outcomes (14). For example, it may
prove worthwhile to specify the torque applied to tighten a particular bolt as part
of a particular component installation procedure. The process owner updates the
electronic documentation with the new specification and adds the torque wrench
to the standard toolkit in the maintenance job’s description in the CMMS. Next,
the engineering team may develop an easier measurement approach to improve the
assembly precision for the part’s installation, improving the accuracy of its alignment.
Later on, cleaning and lubrication procedures may be updated to reduce the cleaning
time and improve application of oil. Improving standardization and precision of
maintenance procedures for critical systems and components can, over time, improve
both reliability and maintainability.
19
For more on quality circles, see “Pillar #2,” Customer Focus.

20
For more on time standards, see on Section 5, “Performance Targets/Benchmarking.”

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Finally, the process owner is responsible for the regular review and update of
process documentation. Ideally, electronic documentation is maintained in a
format and system that make the update process easy, allowing the addition
of new figures and helpful tips. When electronic maintenance documentation
is more detailed and accessible, railcar mechanics and technicians are likely to
make more frequent use of it. The documentation for a preventive maintenance
procedure might include additional practical information such as diagnostic tests,
parts needed, safety cautions, and quality checks. Safety checks can relate to
hazardous chemicals, unsafe temperature, unsafe pressures, equipment position,
or other factors. Quality checks may include specifications like proper pressure,
wrench torque, or part condition. They may also include operation checks to
ensure the effectiveness of the maintenance procedure (17).

Using Process Management

to Improve Communication
Shift changeovers illustrate some of the advantages of improved communication
processes. Not having a clear communication process in place can lead to
maintenance error and confusion as to what work still needs to be completed.
For example, a mechanic can spend hours trying to diagnose a problem, only to
discover that the problem was already diagnosed during an earlier shift. Work
status markers are useful for workers from the outgoing shift to communicate
to workers of the incoming shift whether work is in progress or completed.
This avoids wrongful assumptions that work has been completed on a piece
of equipment when it has in fact, been not, or vice versa (28). Often, improved
CMMS processes can help manage information flows and prevent communication
gaps. On the other hand, inventory departments often face mechanics who do
not fill out requisitions properly, for instance just taking parts from an unmanned
storeroom on the graveyard shift, or who do not update requisitions as their needs
change, leading to supply chain inefficiencies. Such cases illustrate both the need
for effective communication processes and for a disciplined maintenance culture
where workers adhere to those processes.

Addressing Human Factors in Railcar Maintenance

Many mechanical failures can be attributed to human errors during maintenance.
Addressing human factors is a third approach to ensure maintenance quality and
support implementation of the maintenance prevention and process improvement
pillar of TPM. Surveys in the aviation industry have found that maintenance error
was responsible for one in eight major accidents and one half of engine-related
flight delays (34).

Human error is unintentional. It is the natural result of the fundamental

unpredictability in human behavior in an environment where such actions can
cause negative maintenance outcomes. Human factors describe the behaviors and

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circumstances that lead to human errors and provide a framework for managing
them. Human factors are the emotional and mental properties of human behavior
and capability and should be understood as another dimension to maintenance
improvement. Analysis of human factors seeks not to blame employees for
errors, but rather to identify and control characteristics of the task and
environment that raise the likelihood of human error. Addressing human factors
not only improves maintenance quality but can also streamline maintenance
processes and improving process efficiency.

Human factors can be related to qualities of the worker, the maintenance

equipment, the documentation or information environment, the workspace
and physical environment, the organizational environment, and the specific
characteristics of the maintenance task. Some critical human factors that can lead
to maintenance quality and safety issues include the following:

• Lack of communication prevents information flow between employees and

can lead to maintenance error. Good communication is especially important
between employees working on the same maintenance activity, but on
different shifts.
• Complacency can develop over time, especially with routine tasks that

are performed repeatedly, but should be avoided to prevent overlooking

potential risk.

• Distractions can disrupt maintenance tasks and prevent their successful

completion. Distractions are not limited to those that occur in the working
environment, they can also be mental in nature.
• Lack of teamwork prevents effective communication and the sharing of
knowledge and can prevent a common goal from being reached. Teamwork
is necessary for problem solving, troubleshooting, shift turnover, and
coordination of maintenance activities.
• Fatigue and stress, both mental and physical, can impair judgment and lead
to maintenance errors. A contributing factor to fatigue is shift work, which
may often times fall outside an individual’s normal circadian rhythm. Night
shifts, in particular, make employees more susceptible to environmental
disturbances.
• Use of inappropriate tools and parts can lead to employees completing a
job improperly. When the right resources are not in place, individuals have
the tendency to problem-solve and complete the task anyway, often with an
impact on final quality.
• Pressure from managers or downstream workers can affect an employee’s
performance and ability to execute a maintenance task correctly.
• Lack of assertiveness can result in concerns that are not made known. It

is essential that employees have strong communication between peers,

supervisors, and management.

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• Lack of awareness and focus is common for tasks that are performed time and
time again.
• Norms are the ways things are typically done—however, norms may not
always be safe and can be counterproductive. They can develop as a result of a
problem that does not have a straightforward solution. It takes an often difficult
culture shift to shift poor norms and, instead, rely on standard practices and
procedures.
• Poor physical condition of a maintenance worker can also contribute to
maintenance errors. If a mechanic has poor eyesight or motor skills relative to the
average worker, it may be reflected the quality of the person’s work (35), (36).

There are four general approaches to address human errors:

1. The first and usually least-intensive approach to address human factors is to

improve the information environment through improved instructions and
modification of tools and techniques to reduce the likelihood of the human
error.
2. Another approach is to provide training to maintenance staff—for instance,
to improve situational awareness, communication, and team skills that have
been shown to reduce errors due to human factors.
3. Maintenance staff may also address human errors through process
reengineering to address critical human factors in the job design which lead
to human errors. Such an approach requires careful data collection and testing
to verify the root problem and validate the approach.
4. Finally, it may be possible to address human errors in a maintenance process
through the improvement of the workspace and work environment,
using tactics like mistake proofing and implementation of a visual workplace
strategy (see call-out boxes below) to provide better visual cues for
maintenance workers. The overall organizational culture is also a part of the
working environment. An ideal organizational culture is collaborative, has
strong communication at all levels, and fosters support and guidance of its
employees (36).

Approaches to mitigate human factors include:

• Put in place measures to ensure awareness of common hazards, including high
voltage lines, perched objects, heavy objects, moving equipment, and hazardous
materials.
• Put in place physical guards to protect against these same hazards.
• Provide clear and full instructions for the maintenance procedure, if possible and
helpful on the equipment itself.
• Improve accessibility to the system on the vehicle through special tools and

positioning the vehicle or by removing the system from the vehicle.

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• Provide, on the equipment if possible, warnings of hazards and recommend

safety measures such as protective gear.
• Clearly note where a maintenance task requires special training, tools, or
maintenance equipment.
• Put in place checks and fail safes to mitigate the likelihood of serious hazards.
• Ensure the reassembly order of components is clear.
• Provide easy verification for out-of-tolerance operation on safety critical
vehicle systems and maintenance equipment and ensure workers check these.
• Ensure there is an indicator for when fail safes are activated and that workers
make sure to check the indicator.
• Provide training in ergonomics to limit injuries from poor lifting or working
position.
• Ensure careful preparation for all maintenance work and avoid rushing any
tasks.
• Make sure workers log all safety-related defects like corrosion, including for
maintenance equipment and workspaces.
• Rigidly enforce all safety procedures, including the most routine aspects like
appropriate shop dress and workspace cleanliness and log all safety incidents,
including near misses.
• Ensure similar parts and materials can be easily identified and distinguished,
an issue particularly with small commodity items like bolts and nuts.
• Log maintenance errors including type and follow up even when they have
not lead to a failure or safety incident since errors may indicate human
factors issues which might be of consequence in the future (37), (36).

Mistake Proofing
The tactic of mistake-proofing, also known by its Japanese name “poka-yoke,”
works to address human factors introducing common human errors in a
maintenance process that lead to defects and other quality issues impacting
reliability. Quality assurance, engineering support staff, or frontline workers
identify recurring mistakes and redesign the process either to provide easy checks
for the mistake or to minimize the probability of the mistake occurring in the first
place. The mistake proofing process is also intended to streamline QA/QC into the
production process and improve overall efficiency (14).

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Visual Workplace
A visual workplace uses visual management and communication to quickly convey
timely information in maintenance work spaces. Visual controls are an efficient
way to ensure quick, accurate assessments or decisions, minimizing errors from
human factors and improving maintenance efficiency. Visual systems and controls
also help reduce unnecessary motion to carry out tasks. On equipment, a visual
control can include noting or marking desired operating ranges to allow quick
testing. Simple fault sensors can serve as efficient visual controls. For instance,
temperature sensitive tape can be used on critical components to detect
overheating. Other examples include:

• Markings to guide proper installation direction

• Color-coding fluid caps, bottles, or storage areas to avoid use of the
wrong fluid
• Transparent doors to give visibility to compartments for quick
assessment
• Pneumatic line color conventions to avoid misidentification of onboard
pneumatic systems
• Use of barcodes or RFID to allow each scanning to identify part
numbers
• Action boards to give the status and trends associated with a particular
vehicle or vehicle system
• Color-coded dashboards to help prioritize actions such as nearly due or
overdue preventive maintenance actions
• Photographs and drawings to support documentation of procedures in
maintenance manuals (14).

Educating railcar maintenance employees on these measures helps ensure they

are included as part of the department’s performance improvement processes,
including, for example, RCM, process management, and quality circles. Many
obvious human factors issues are best addressed in the procurement process.
For example, modern railcar maintenance facilities use layout, barriers, and
color-coding to address human factors and improve safety. Where possible,
design reviews in the procurement process should specifically address human
factors.

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Human Factors and Workplace Safety

Human factors often interact with higher risk activities to create workplace safety
incidents. Therefore, it is particularly important to control for human factors in
environments and situations with systemic risk. Work in confined spaces, around
high voltage lines and suspended loads, or in proximity to vehicles or mobile
equipment are especially associated with serious worker injuries. Likewise, the
improper adherence to lock out tag out protocols and the improper use of physical
safety guards and barriers and safety controls for high temperature and pressure
equipment and hazardous materials also lead to a high share of serious worker
injuries in transit. Addressing human factors related to such precursor events can
help mitigate human errors that lead to safety incidents (50).

Pillar #2: Customer and Quality Focus

The second of TPM’s pillars, a focus on customers and maintenance quality,21
helps maintenance workers to understand their role within the overall transit
organization and reinforces individuals’ accountability for maintenance outcomes.
Linking daily maintenance activities to customers and quality can also help motivate
the workforce by instilling a sense of purpose in the maintenance program and
investing mechanics and technicians in their work. The customer focus (see later
subsection) involves bringing maintenance staff closer to the customer base and
working more on maintenance issues of critical concern to customers. The quality
focus (see later subsection) involves an extended commitment to measuring,
verifying, and improving the quality of maintenance work.

Zero breakdowns, zero accidents, zero injuries, and zero defects are clear TPM
goals that frontline workers can easily understand and work towards (14).

Customer Focus
TPM’s customer focus provides a basis for the railcar maintenance department
to prioritize its efforts. Customer feedback ensures awareness of customer
needs, expectations, and any shortfalls in meeting them. For a railcar
maintenance program, its customers include both the transit passenger and
internal customers. For example, materials and inventory staff should be
in close touch with shop customers—the end users of the parts. Likewise,
specialty shops, like electronics, should seek regular input from downstream
customers within the railcar maintenance program to ensure the shop’s
workflow is effectively prioritized. The railcar maintenance program as a whole

21
Work quality is a central focus of TPM, so it should be no surprise that it features prominently not only in
discussing Pillar #2 and its supporting tactics but also in discussing the other pillars.

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serves the operations department, ensuring revenue vehicle availability and

reliability and responding to mechanical incidents. If organizational goals are
carefully defined, the needs of all customers should be closely aligned (26).
Customer feedback can come from frontline employees, surveys, focus groups,
and customer service call centers.

Through their daily interactions with customers, frontline and interface

employees (interface employees are those who interface with an upstream
or downstream function) often have practical insight into customer needs
and issues with existing maintenance practices. Formal processes to
collect feedback from these employees can help ensure their insights are
communicated to the appropriate functional team (24). Railcar maintenance
managers can get direct feedback from customers through formal surveys,
interviews, comments made to customer service agents or through feedback
cards. Managers can also directly track measures of service quality and
passenger satisfaction, such as ridership, mechanical reliability, and vandalism.

For internal customers, like transportation operations, there can be a formal

feedback process in place with defined goals and performance measures, such
as for vehicle availability. Examples of internal feedback mechanisms include a
regular customer survey, feedback forms when specific issues arise, and a follow
up process when a maintenance team does not meet expected service levels.
Cross-functional working groups and quality circles (see call-out box below) are
also effective feedback and problem solving approaches.

Vehicle maintenance managers can ensure that passenger satisfaction measures

related to the maintenance program’s work receive a high profile within the
department. From the perspective of maintenance, mechanical reliability is
consistently seen as the most critical component of service quality, along
with the comfort and cleanliness of vehicles (22). A customer focus can also
help underpin a healthy maintenance culture where employees have sustained
commitment and motivation to execute their roles well and deliver quality
work (28).

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Quality Circles
Quality circles are informal problem solving groups associated with a functional
team or a specific business process that meet regularly to address previously
identified performance issues. Typically the scope of the issues addressed in a
quality circle is fairly narrow. Issues are usually process-related and not overly-
technical. Technical or overly complex issues are better addressed by a quality
improvement team in a dedicated project. Usually, one to three issues are
addressed in a single session, lasting no more than an hour. Often, a manager or
team leader facilitates and ensures a consensus for action is reached by the end of
the meeting. Letting employees drive the process helps ensure it is relevant and
effective. Managers should encourage employees to take ownership and adapt the
process as they see fit (57). Quality circles can use any brainstorming or problem
solving technique that the participants deem appropriate, but methods usually
emphasize a visual approach and the participation of everyone. At the end of the
meeting, participants identify, prioritize, and take responsibility for action items
(60). A subsequent quality circle may be needed to revisit and review actions and
pursue further progress on the issue. However, each quality circle meeting should
be treated as a discrete opportunity to address the issue. A simple log kept by the
facilitator can help track the progress and accomplishments of the quality circle
over time and help understand its contribution over the long term.

TPM’s customer focus promotes a preventive in mentality. Employees should

always be asking how to prevent the issue in the first place and how to streamline
processes to better serve their customers, whether the end user (the passenger)
or an internal customer. When defects and failures do occur or a team fails to
meet a service level, it is important that employees take the time to evaluate the
incident and understand its causes. If necessary, a team may conduct a follow up
investigation and target the issue for improvement (6).

Maintenance Quality Assurance

TPM seeks to make maintenance quality the responsibility of every railcar
maintenance worker. Improving maintenance quality requires a combination of
improving maintenance practices’ effectiveness and quality assurance measures
to ensure maintenance procedures are properly executed. Since Pillar #1 has
already covered the first aspect of quality improvement—process improvement,
this section focuses on quality assurance. Rolling stock maintenance programs use
diverse quality assurance processes, both formal and informal. Formal measures
can help ensure the consistent application of quality assurance checks and hold
individuals accountable for maintenance quality. Formal quality assurance measures
include preventive maintenance inspections, random quality control inspections,
dedicated quality control staff on the shop floor, internal quality audits, follow-up
on vehicle operation performance issues, and follow up on repeat failures (17).

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Post-maintenance testing is among the most intensively used quality assurance

measure. The goals of post-maintenance testing are to:

• Ensure that the worker has successfully completed the maintenance procedure.
• Ensure no new defects have been introduced during the work completed.
• Ensure the vehicle system is prepared for revenue service.

Post-maintenance testing is usually necessary after corrective maintenance and

often for preventive maintenance, depending on the criticality of the system and
the maintenance error or success rates for the system. A worker can conduct
an effective testing procedure on the spot with minimal effort with the following
considerations:

• The testing employee needs competence with any measurement tools or

apparatus, and it is also helpful for the worker to understand conceptually how
the test works.
• Importantly, the test must be predictive of the repair’s actual success.
• If equipment tested is subsequently failing, the testing method needs to be

updated to improve its precision and accuracy or to expand its scope.

• Recording quality test and check results in the CMMS helps ensure that the

worker has carried out the test and preserves the information for future

analysis, including of the test’s effectiveness (37).

Random spot checks and inspections by dedicated quality assurance staff are the
most common strategies for checking the quality of preventive maintenance work.
A 2010 survey of North American transit agencies revealed that 79 percent have
some quality assurance measures in place for maintenance and 41 percent perform
spot checks. It is important that the quality assurance staff follows up on each
deficiency identified by the check. The original mechanic or technician performing
the maintenance should receive immediate re-training if possible and the issue
should be logged to track workers’ performance over time. In some agencies,
quality assurance staff directly oversees a mechanic’s work as part of spot checks.
The quality assurance specialist double checks the mechanic’s work to ensure
measurements, tests, and other procedures follow standards and demonstrate
the correct method as necessary. Quality assurance staff may also be needed to
oversee the work of vendors (38).

Auditing is another common approach to quality assurance for railcar maintenance.

Quality assurance audits rely on impartial observers, usually trained quality
auditors,22 to reveal where maintenance workers have deviated from maintenance
plans, maintenance standards, or agency policy and practices. Beyond correcting
such shortcomings, a careful audit also offers the opportunity to develop

22
For instance, the American Society for Quality has a Certified Quality Auditor professional designation program.

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recommendations for process improvement—both at the technical and

organizational levels—that can help drive improved maintenance performance.
The failure of maintenance staff to finish a procedure or to carry it out correctly
can lead to additional costs from component failures and service disruptions.
Quality assurance audits are also an opportunity to benchmark an agency’s current
practices against industry best practices at a detailed level, and they help to update
management assumptions, such as desired performance levels for a given asset or
function. When there is a standing quality assurance audit function, performance
reports can document the results for upper managers at an appropriate interval:
monthly or quarterly or as the audit results come out. Quality assurance audits can
cover the maintenance organization’s full range of functional areas including:

• Organization and staffing

• Labor productivity
• Management training
• Planner training
• Craft training
• Motivation
• Management and budget
• Work order planning and scheduling
• Facilities
• Stores, materials, and inventory
• Preventive maintenance and equipment history
• Condition monitoring
• Work measurement and incentives
• Information systems.

The agency’s ability to meet standards in each area can be scored and an overall
maintenance program audit score created. Likewise, it is possible to use detailed
scoring for each element of the individual audits. Audit recommendations flag
specific issues for follow up and weight the recommendation by criticality. For each
recommendation, the audit identifies the individual responsible for addressing it;
managers can then track every recommendation through to its resolution. Auditors
may include internal staff from the maintenance program, staff from peers or
agencies with oversight responsibilities, internal audit staff, or consultants (39).

A good audit process should be non-adversarial. It emphasizes transparency and

collaboration with key stakeholders to identify specific steps to address audit
recommendations. An agency’s response to audit recommendations is an important
indicator of its management culture and commitment to accountability. For
instance, basing the quality assurance audit on a random and representative sample

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of maintenance jobs underscores the impartiality of the process and helps it not to
appear punitive.

For an audit to have an effective outcome, it is important to present the process

as an investment and allocate extra budget/resources for follow-up. Addressing
audit recommendations should be an opportunity for employees to gain exposure
within the organization—a high profile task rather than just a compliance exercise.
Importantly, an audit should include, if necessary, a mandate for substantive change
from the executive level to ensure the organization can move forward with changes.

TPM emphasizes the value of a preventive approach to assure maintenance quality

and of the leadership role that frontline workers can play in guarantying and
improving quality. TPM relies the deployment of diverse methods and tactics to
help managers and frontline workers successfully devise and deliver improvements
focused on preventing errors and defects and ensuring maximum initial quality.
One example of such methods is the 5S methodology (described in the box below),
which focuses on creating an environment that minimizes human error. Mistake
proofing (see later subsection) focuses on the prevention of specific errors. Quality
circles (see later subsection) provide employees with an opportunity to identify and
address specific issues in short sessions dedicated to problem-solving (30).

Metro Audit of Railcar

Preventive Maintenance Practices
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) Inspector
General’s 2011 audit of railcar preventive maintenance (62) provides an example
of a high quality audit, identifying several areas of concern including incomplete
or poorly completed preventive maintenance activities. If items on the preventive
maintenance checklists are not completed or are completed poorly, the condition
of railcar systems can deteriorate rapidly and lead to in service failures and more
costly unplanned repairs. In the case of Metro’s audit of preventive maintenance,
auditors found that traction motor brushes were not replaced for several railcars in
the audit sample despite wearing beyond minimal limits. Preventive maintenance
procedures dictates that these parts be inspected as part of the 22,500 mile
inspection. Worn brushes can damage the motor’s commutator, which is
substantially more expensive to replace than the low cost brushes. Because the
brushes cannot be expected to last until the next 22,500 mile inspection, the
commutator can be damaged sufficiently to cause the propulsion system to fail
entire, creating an even more costly failure event.

Critically, the auditors used work order records from the CMMS to trace the
issues back to particular personnel and follow up with them. Identifying specific
issues and tracing back their root causes ensures maintenance staff can develop
and implement effective improvement measures to address the audit issues. The
internal audit report identified specific follow up actions backed up by high level
management scrutiny. The Metro example shows the importance of the audit
process a quality assurance measure, especially in large agencies, to prevent major
deviations from standard business practices when other management control
measures fail.

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5S Methodology
The 5S methodology is another technique from Japanese total quality
management practices. 5S stands for (1) Seiri or “Sorting Out,” (2) Seiton or
“Systematic Arrangement,” (3) Seiso or “Shine,” (4) Seikutsu or “Standardization,”
and (5) Shitsuku or “Self-Discipline.” Frontline employees can deploy the 5S
methodology to improve the operational efficiency of their maintenance work
stations and raise their productivity and quality.

• “Sorting out” refers to the elimination of superfluous or redundant

elements of a process, including preparation, instructions, procedural
steps, and parts. This process addresses unnecessary complexity, makes
a process more clear, and reduces the possibility of human error.
• “Systematic arrangement” or “straightening” is a principle focused on
the reorganization of tools, equipment, and workspaces to ensure the
most frequently used items and spaces are conveniently located and
easy to identify. This process reduces time spent finding and retrieving
appropriate tools and moving between workstations.
• “Shine” or “spic and span” underscores the need for a clean, tidy
workspace. This principle ensures that succeeding shifts find well-kept
workspaces ready for use and that workspaces remain organized and
efficient.
• “Standardizing” emphasizes that workstations and procedures for a
specific job should be identical. Employees should be able to use any
workstation for the same job and should be able to complete any
partially complete job. This process reduces setup time and promotes
flexibility in operations.
• “Self-discipline” or “sustaining the practice” refers to the need to maintain
improvements and adhere to procedures. Without self-discipline,
performance and improvements deteriorate over time (14), (25).

Pillar #3: Collaboration and Teamwork

The third pillar of TPM, collaboration and teamwork, provides an important
foundation for continuous performance improvement. Collaboration and
teamwork help ensure all maintenance workers understand and participate
in the department’s performance improvement processes. Furthermore, the
collaboration and teamwork pillar focuses on breaking down organizational
silos and building cross-functional collaboration and an organizational culture
where all maintenance and supporting workers have aligned goals.

Quality improvement teams are a common strategy for frontline performance

improvement to bring stakeholders together to address maintenance

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operations issues. Like RCM project teams, quality improvement teams provide
a structured process for collaborative performance improvement, but focused
more on maintenance processes than on vehicle systems. Change management
is another important strategy for coordinating large-scale change and involving
stakeholder. Continuous improvement demands frequent changes in the way
the department does business, and often these changes are major. Change
management provides a framework for ensuring participation in and support
for the process based on planning, collaboration, and teamwork. Note that
collaboration and teamwork are also embedded in the many of the methods
presented in support of the other three TPM pillars. For example, self-managed
teams, process management, quality circles, and change management all
promote collaboration and teamwork. At a more basic level, a general focus
on renewing the agency’s maintenance culture can help instill collaboration
and teamwork as foundational values and also reinforce the implementation of
TPM’s other pillars and is discussed further in Section 6.

Quality Improvement Teams

Quality improvement projects provide critical support to the TPM approach.
Like RCM projects, quality improvement projects identify target performance
issues through a critical, independent assessment, such as a criticality analysis.
Quality improvement projects may respond to issues identified through the
performance management system or independently by employees. Target
issues are typically complex problems related to process improvement rather
than engineering issues which would be covered under the RCM approach
(24). Quality improvement projects typically focus on railcar maintainability,
either directly or indirectly. Improving the efficient delivery of parts is one
example of an issue indirectly related to maintainability – more timely delivery
of parts can help improve overall repair times. A new quality check instituted
in a maintenance procedure is an example of an improvement project directly
related to maintainability. The new quality check improves maintenance
effectiveness by reducing the likelihood of a comeback and subsequent repair to
the same system.

Once a target issue has been established for a quality improvement project, the
manager should assemble a quality improvement team (QIT). An effective QIT
resembles a RCM project team. Success factors include the following:

• The QIT should have a project sponsor and a manager responsible for

monitoring the project.

• Teams typically have a leader responsible for managing the team’s work and
ensuring focus and progress. Team leaders should have a proven ability to
moderate among team members and manage projects.

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• Cross-functional teams offer a more complete understanding of the entire

maintenance process. Depending on the technical complexity of the
target issue, the QIT might involve mechanics and technicians, materials
staff, process or mechanical engineering staff, quality assessment staff,
and foremen or more senior maintenance managers. Some maintenance
organizations may need to keep consistent teams because of their small
size.
• The size of the teams should be commensurate with the scope and degree
of the target issue. Small teams typically make faster progress and better
engage individual members.
• Depending on the team’s focus area, it may meet temporarily or on an
ongoing basis. Teams with more dedicated time usually find it easier to
collaborate and make rapid progress. Providing significant dedicated time
to performance improvement teams is one way for managers to show their
commitment to the process (14), (24).

Quality improvement projects should have clear and specific goals: for example,
a 15 percent reduction in the time the process takes. Such goals provide the
team with a concrete focus and allow easy assessment of the project’s success.
An eight-week term is a common standard for improvement projects, typically
followed by a test phase where the QIT pilots the proposed improvement to
verify its effectiveness based on objective measurement (24).

The quality improvement team may select one or more problem solving
methodologies to tackle the target issue. Ideally all team members have direct
experience implementing the approach selected, but at the very least, the team
leader should (24). While RCM emphasizes a quantitative analytical approach to
maintenance improvement, TPM relies on a mix of management, engineering,
qualitative analysis, and problem solving tools to achieve process improvements.
Such tools include Pareto analysis, statistical process control, problem solving
techniques (like brainstorming and functional diagramming), team-based
problem solving, mistake-proofing, autonomous maintenance, continuous
improvement, setup time reduction, 5S, waste minimization, benchmarking,
bottleneck analysis, A/B testing, reliability, maintainability, and availability (RMA)
analysis, recognition and reward programs, and system simulation (14). The
team may also facilitate quality improvement exercises, such as quality circles,
mistake-proofing, and visual workplace improvements.

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A/B Testing
A/B testing is an analysis method to test a potential change before fully adapting
it. A/B testing best targets process changes in a complex environment where the
influence of a single factor is difficult to observe and determine. The proposed
improvement is implemented on a test set of vehicles or employees which
resembles the overall population in all key respects. Managers select a measure
of effectiveness to compare the two populations, preferably with data collected
automatically through the CMMS. The effectiveness measure should target the
variable changed as closely as possible, for instance the failure rate of a particular
vehicle system rather than the overall vehicle failure rate, so as to minimize the
influence of unrelated effects on the measurement. The test period should be
of an appropriate length to register any difference accurately. In many cases, it
is possible to establish a statistical confidence level with the data collected. It is
important to measure both groups simultaneously to limit the effect of other
factors on the effectiveness measure. A/B testing results can help determine
both the success and cost-effectiveness of a particular change to a maintenance
process, such as a change in preventive maintenance procedures, the effectiveness
of a training, or the use of a new vendors for a part or service.

Change Management
Change management is a process to help agencies navigate major organizational
transitions and can help agencies move forward with new ways of doing
business as part of TPM. Change management relies on the development and
execution of a plan to support and transition of employees through the major
change. The process involves careful planning to prepare for the change by
anticipating impacts and resistance, then continually monitoring the change
once it has been implemented. Overcoming resistance is perhaps the most
difficult part of a major change such as the implementation of a new CMMS,
and getting buy-in from the entire maintenance department and other agency
departments is crucial to gain support to champion the change. Change can
only happen once employees have the motivation and understanding for
its need. Rather than dismissing resistance from employees, management
should make an effort to understand the resistance in order to overcome it.
Employees should be involved in the feedback process; their involvement is
critical to make improvements and secure buy-in (40). Change management
relies on the following foundational elements:

• Present the need for change persuasively: Define a clear rationale to

establish the need for change and a clear vision of the desired outcome
from change.
• Identify and consult with stakeholders: The people affected by the change have an
opportunity to review the proposal and provide input throughout the process.

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• Provide an action plan to implement change: An action plan provides a

transparent roadmap to implementation of change, including resources

required, a communication plan, and clear timelines.

• Establish broad organizational leadership for the process: Leadership at all

levels throughout an organization driving a change helps ensure its success.
• Focus on the people: Plan for the training, communication, counseling,

coaching, and other assistance necessary for employees to successfully

support the process and transition to the new culture.

• Track the change process: Ensure that the process successfully meets goals
and milestones and prepare to respond and adapt to any issues that arise.

Success factors include having in place strong program governance with

clearly defined leadership, accountability for all implementation steps and
supporting actions, and roles and responsibilities for all staff. Middle and upper
managers provide strong leadership and role modeling for the change process
and effectively communicate the vision and urgency of change. Finally, it is
important to have an ongoing commitment to the change that endures beyond
the project itself to institutionalize the change (41), (42).

Change Management at Turin’s

Public Transit System
When Turin’s transit operating company, Azienda Torinese Mobilita (ATM, now
Gruppo Turinese Trasporti), began to plan for its partial privatization in the late
1990s, the company’s managers realized the importance of a comprehensive
change management process to ensure a successfully transition. In response
to an operating environment where ATM would face higher accountability
for service quality and cost-effectiveness, the agency instituted an ambitious
investment program, worked toward ISO 9001 and 14001 compliance, revised
labor agreements to better align employee incentives to support performance.
As part of the change management process, ATM’s managers worked to involve
employees at all levels and from all functions in the process, especially in setting
performance targets and reaching consensus about reorganizations. ATM worked
to increase transparency of its management culture and decision-making, sharing
more information and developing more rigorous and objective promotion
practices. Overall, the ATM navigated the transition successfully and remains the
primary operator of Turin’s public transportation system (42).

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Pillar #4: Continuous Learning

Continuous learning is the fourth pillar of TPM.23 Continuous learning
envisions the railcar maintenance department as a learning organization
committed to ongoing development of the workforce and includes the following
characteristics:

• Railcar maintenance employees have access to diverse learning

opportunities including formal classroom training, informal on-the-job

training, and outside third party education.

• Training is selected and prioritized based on the objective needs of the

department.

• The railcar maintenance department emphasizes learning and development

for all employees, regardless of function, rank, or tenure.
• Learning emphasizes both technical skills and soft skills, like teamwork,

communication, and coaching.

• The department encourages peer education where frontline employees

train and education each other.

Training is the most important element of developing a railcar maintenance

department into a learning organization. The implementation of TPM
requires both initial training as part of the change management process
as well as a commitment to ongoing training and the development of the
railcar maintenance program into a learning organization. TPM encourages
maintenance employees to think broadly about their job responsibilities and
their role in achieving the department’s goals. Training empowers employees
to focus on quality and conduct autonomous maintenance by broadening their
skills and knowledge to help drive the process. Figure 3-16 shows some of
the main reasons transit agencies have difficulty maintaining and improving
the overall skill level of fleet maintenance workers. Committing to becoming
a learning organization can help a railcar maintenance organization overcome
many of these barriers.

23
Note that additional material related to this pillar of TPM is discussed in Section 6.

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Figure 3-16
Barriers to Mechanics’ Skill Development

Source: 1995 survey of public transit agencies, Finegold, Robbins, et al. (28)

Training might cover technical skills such as certification for the use of key
equipment, learning new tests, calibrations, and quality control measures,
and diagnosis and fault analysis methodologies. It might build foundational
knowledge such as principles of electronics or engine function. Finally, training
might focus on developing soft skills, including communication, project
management, and leadership. Employees with a more holistic understanding of
the maintenance process are better equipped to have insights into performance
improvement and to understand their own responsibilities within the
organization. Likewise, better trained employees are more likely to recognize
opportunities for performance improvement (14). Because of its importance
in railcar maintenance management, workforce training and organization
development are addressed in detail in Section 7.

The learning organization approach provides a broad-based approach to

training, learning, and skill development. Learning organizations aim to boost
interaction and knowledge sharing among employees by creating opportunities

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for learning both through training and daily work, promoting the development
of soft skills to improve team-based work, and encouraging continuous
improvement (28). There also needs to be an understanding of the agency’s
mission and goals in order for worker empowerment and ownership to follow.
Critical general knowledge and skills to support TPM’s success include:

• Quality and customer awareness: maintenance managers must ensure

that all railcar mechanics, technicians, and support workers understand
their customers’ needs and the organization’s commitment to quality.
They should clearly understand how this relates to their daily work and
how they will be held accountable for the quality of their output and their
performance against customer-oriented goals.
• Coaching skills: managers and team leaders must be equipped to facilitate
problem solving, solicit input, and support employee development.
• Quality improvement methodologies: frontline workers should have the
opportunity to learn specific TPM process improvement methodologies to
deploy in their daily work and as part of quality improvement teams (24).

The process of becoming a learning organization requires addressing any

communications gap between supervisors and the frontline workforce.
Fostering an environment where employees can not only provide feedback,
but are given significant opportunities for input and control, together with
accountability, encourages knowledge sharing and can prevent disconnects
between how tasks are done and frontline workers’ perceptions of how they
should be done.

Lessons for TPM Implementation

TPM implementation begins with the commitment of the railcar maintenance
department’s top managers to the initiative. Managers at all levels are
responsible for communicating the importance of the initiative to frontline staff.
Champions for TPM are critical to drive the process and maintain progress.
TPM relies on sustained commitment; implementation can easily last three
to five year. Managers must demonstrate an ongoing commitment to TPM
and hold staff at all levels accountable. Business plans, trainings, and business
processes need to reflect TPM goals and provide resources to support the
organizational transformation to implement TPM. It can be helpful to recognize
and promote success stories and the individuals and teams driving them (14).
Typically, a management working group is dedicated to ongoing oversight of the
TPM process (24).

The implementation of TPM in railcar maintenance relies on significant

preparation steps, which can be included in the department’s regular annual
planning. The implementation steps detail specific goals and responsible staff

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members, performance measures, and milestones. First steps usually include

the training of supervisors and other management staff. It is important to have
staff in place with sufficient expertise, including appropriate technical skills
and practical experience implementing TPM, to support TPM initiatives (24).
Another important success factor is to engage with frontline workers and
union leadership and ensure there is an understanding among these groups
about the need for and logic behind the implementation of TPM measures (14),
(43). As part of this outreach process, it is helpful to identify evangelists within
the organization who can take ownership of the project within the different
functional areas of the organization and drive implementation to engage all
employees who actively express interest in the initiative and harness their
enthusiasm (24).

Continuous improvement consists of maintaining past progress and

incrementally increasing the performance standards to ensure continual
improvement. Managers can develop continuous improvement plans which
focus on the most promising areas for performance improvement and
allocate resources to identify and address specific performance issues and
opportunities. Note that resources allocated to continuous improvement
should be in proportion to the expected improvement. Continuous
improvement plans should outline the organization and roles of workers at
all levels with respect to the improvement process. Managers should test
different performance improvement approaches and attempt to involve all
maintenance employees in the improvement program (14).

As part of the initial commitment to TPM’s implementation, managers may

also identify strategic areas of focus. These may include implementation in a
particular functional team or facility, or the initial focus may be on particular
elements of TPM. Setting milestones for progress to achieve the overall vision
can help ensure TPM’s success. Breaking implementation into attainable pieces
helps measure progress and consolidate gains in each area of focus (24), (14).
Using a pilot project (for instance, in a particular shop or facility) to tackle
TPM on a smaller scale lays a foundation for implementing the approach
more broadly. The pilot project should have a clear impact from TPM and its
successes should be apparent. Ideally, TPM eventually will become a part of
the culture of the agency; its processes should extend beyond organizational
practices to the behavior of agency personnel (27).

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Key Success Factors

Ø Employees use ongoing customer feedback to allocate maintenance
resources and improve maintenance practices.
Ø There is a quality assurance program in place including inspections,
audits, and follow-up processes.
Ø The department uses quality improvement teams to improve target
maintenance processes and outcomes.
Ø Quality improvement teams include broad participation of
maintenance staff.
Ø The department supports its employees’ continuous acquisition of
skills and knowledge.
Ø Critical maintenance procedures and business processes have clear
ownership, are clearly documented and standardized, and are reviewed
regularly for performance improvement opportunities.
Ø The department’s teams hold regular quality circles both within and
across functions.
Ø Employees have good awareness of human factors’ role in railcar
maintenance outcomes.

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 Railcar Maintenance

SECTION

Planning Processes

This section describes the planning activities that railcar maintenance managers
should be supporting at all levels of an agency—from agency-wide strategic planning
to capital planning to day-to-day maintenance staff work plans. This section covers
the importance of planning processes for the direction and implementation of the
overall fleet maintenance program and the ongoing performance and condition of the
railcar fleet.

Generally, planning processes are the first step to translate a transit agency’s
vision and goals down to the department level and then into implementation
of concrete actions. A planning process reconciles end goals with available
resources and provides a defined path to a specific set of outcomes. A planning
process identifies specific work requirements, allocates resources and a
reasonable budget, and defines an approach for completing the work. For
railcar maintenance managers, planning is important for their day-to-day work
activities and in support of the agency’s capital program and operating budget
processes to verify the department can achieve the following objectives:

• Meet the fleet requirements of the transportation operations department.

• Control fleet lifecycle costs generally and maintenance costs in particular.
• Ensure a high quality experience for the customer.

Through a coordinated planning approach, the railcar maintenance department

can ensure its maintenance practices are aligned with the agency’s goals and
performance objectives while remaining consistent with available funding and
resources. Strategic plans, lifecycle management plans, work planning, and
other planning processes related to the railcar fleet are intended to document
decision-making, guide the development of the fleet capital program and
maintenance department operating budget, and, ultimately, provide roadmaps
for delivering rail service that is as safe, cost-effective, and reliable as possible.
Cross-functional planning efforts include service planning and procurement
planning where the railcar maintenance department does not lead the planning
process but is a key stakeholder (1).

Effective railcar maintenance planning processes result in:

• Improved support of agency goals: When railcar maintenance

department representatives are involved in an agency’s strategic planning
sessions, it ensures that railcar maintenance plans align effectively with

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the agency’s overall goals and strategy and with other departments’ work
programs. Moreover, the railcar maintenance group can ensure that the
goals and performance targets are attainable based on the department’s
capabilities and capacity.
• Proactive maintenance approach: Effective lifecycle management
planning is an important foundation for improving the fleet’s preventive
maintenance program and reducing reactive maintenance levels, as well as
for establishing effective performance improvement processes.
• Continuous improvement: Railcar maintenance programs are complex
operations that must respond to evolving vehicle technologies and needs,
compliance with manifold regulations, and work in complex operating
environments. Planning in railcar maintenance not only covers fleet needs
but also those of the supporting facilities and equipment, human resources,
materials management, and information technology. High quality planning
processes can help ensure investment in ongoing improvement and to help
anticipate challenges and make preparations to cost-effectively avoid them
or mitigate their impact.
• Improved stakeholder understanding and communication: A
clear definition of an agency’s goals, including clear links between overall
agency goals and specific frontline goals, as well as communication of
progress made toward achieving the goals can improve relations with
stakeholders both within and external to the agency through increased
transparency.
• Stronger agency accountability: A clear understanding of agency-wide
goals and performance measures that can be tied to the railcar maintenance
goals and performance measures increases transparency and accountability.
It ensures resources are allocated efficiently and the workforce’s
productivity and performance is maximized.

Railcar Maintenance’s
Role in Planning
There are four typical agency planning processes critical to fleet management
that the maintenance department should either participate in or direct.
Table 4-1 describes each of the four planning process and outlines the railcar
maintenance department’s role more specifically.

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Table 4-1
Key Planning Processes For Railcar Maintenance

Agency Planning
Planning Activities Railcar Maintenance Role
Processes
Strategic Planning Goal-setting process where agency’s • Provide input into strategic planning process, including the
strategic direction and associated railcar maintenance department’s role in the overall agency
performance measures are strategy, department capabilities and capacity, performance
established. The strategic planning management, and department initiatives and challenges.
process will, ultimately, determine • Confirm that goals, objectives, and performance measures are
the agency’s priorities with respect attainable based on maintenance department’s resources and
to service and expansion, as well as capacity.
how the agency will use its resources,
including staff and funding.
Service Planning Based on level of service goals, • Provide input into service planning discussions to ensure that
agency’s passenger service schedules that plans are attainable based on available resources and
are established. Service planning is expected fleet condition.
also associated with the development • Identify investments needed to support planned future service,
of the agency’s Long Range Plan both in the immediate future and in the longer term.
and its Fleet Management Plan, • Ensure Long Range Plan and Fleet Management Plan consider
which outlines the agency’s fleet maintenance implications of future projects and procurements.
requirements.
Lifecycle Management Prioritize capital projects and • Develop railcar lifecycle management plans to guide the fleet
Planning maintenance plan and budget based preventive maintenance program, rehabilitation programs,
on fleet condition and performance. performance improvement, and new vehicle purchases.
Ensure fleet, facilities, and equipment • Identify workforce, facilities, and equipment investments
investments and maintenance activities necessary to effectively carry out maintenance and overhaul
support fleet performance goals and work.
minimize long-term fleet costs.
Budget and Work Detail maintenance program • Lead the development of the department’s maintenance
Planning implementation, including establishing strategy, including predictive and preventive maintenance
preventive maintenance strategy, activities and performance improvement processes.
work processes, staffing levels, parts • Identify types and levels of work needed to complete lifecycle
requirements, facility needs, and management activities (maintenance and rehabilitation).
performance improvement processes. • Budget and assign department resources to complete
expected fleet maintenance and support activities.
• Coordinate with Human Resources, Information Technology,
Purchasing and Materials Management, and other departments
to implement maintenance strategy and ensure staff, materials,
software, etc. are in place and effectively managed.

The following sections describe the railcar maintenance managers’ role in each
of these agency planning processes in more detail.

Railcar Maintenance’s
Role in Strategic Planning
An agency’s strategic planning process identifies the overall goals and priorities
for the agency over the short and long terms, and it is important for a railcar
maintenance department’s staff to understand how their work fits within the
agency’s broader goals. The railcar maintenance department is responsible
for ensuring that the fleet is available to provide safe and reliable transit

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service, and the agency’s strategic plan determines the scope and intensity of
the department’s work. For example, an agency strategy to improve farebox
recovery might involve commitments to efficiency and quality improvements
in fleet maintenance; likewise, an agency’s geographic expansion and rising
service levels would require a supporting fleet management strategy to support
increased fleet size, changing service geography and patterns, and new vehicles.
The strategic planning process ensures that the agency’s broader goals and
strategies are aligned with the railcar maintenance department’s own strategy,
capacity, and capabilities. The experience of Chicago’s Regional Transportation
Authority in the call-out box below highlights how strategic-level decisions
at the agency and metropolitan planning organization levels can translate into
improved asset management practices in a railcar maintenance department.

Chicago Regional Transportation Authority Condition Assessment

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Chicago’s rail transit system underwent a sustained decline in
its condition. After initiating a major rebuilding program in the 1990s that took many rail facilities
out of service for extended periods, Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) made the
decision to move toward a condition-based capital programming model. The new approach began
with an overall condition assessment of the assets of the region’s three transit agencies. Through
this assessment, RTA identified 23 percent of the region’s transit railcars as having a condition rating
of poor, including 18 percent of active railcars already beyond their useful lives. The condition
assessment also showed that RTA had substantially underestimated capital investment and
maintenance needs overall. For railcars alone, the overall capital investment backlog to maintain a
state-of-good-repair was estimated at $5.9B.

RTA has committed to regular update of its asset inventory through ongoing condition assessments.
RTA’s new capital programming process now screens projects based on their safety, state-of-good-
repair, and regulatory compliance impacts and prioritizes system maintenance over expansion and
enhancement for capital funding. The agency’s capital programming performance measures are also
focused system maintenance:

• Shares of funding dedicated to maintenance, enhancement, and expansion

• Investment backlog to maintain a state-of-good-repair
• Percent of assets in good condition
• Percent of vehicles beyond useful life
• Miles between major mechanical failures

This capital planning approach has translated into a renewed focus on fleet maintenance and
rehabilitation for the region’s transit agencies. It also supports the use of procurement strategies
such as best-value procurements (see Section 7, “Best-Value Procurement”) to ensure the acquisition
of vehicles with better reliability and maintainability and lower overall lifecycle costs, as well as a
stable fleet preventive maintenance program. Finally, RTA’s capital planning approach encourages the
railcar maintenance program to play a role in mitigating overall capital costs through a productive
maintenance program which emphasizes a lifecycle approach. The region’s transit agencies are now
implementing enterprise asset management systems, which will support ongoing collection of condition
data, supporting not only capital programming but also ongoing performance improvement and their
own lower level maintenance and capital planning (8), (10), (9).

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As Figure 4-1 shows, the railcar maintenance group should be providing input
into the agency’s strategic planning processes, but they should also be taking
the outcomes of these strategic planning meetings and incorporating them into
their maintenance strategy and performance management practices (1).

Figure 4-1
Railcar Maintenance
Role in an Agency’s
Planning Processes

Railcar Maintenance’s
Role in Service Planning
A transit agency’s service planning function is typically responsible for
determining how to structure bus and rail service to best address the agency’s
goals. Ultimately, the service planning function develops schedules that specify
the level of service that customers expect to receive every day. To be able
to meet these schedules, the railcar maintenance department should provide
fleet availability levels by time of day, day of the week, and ongoing (based
on retirements, new vehicles, and rehabilitation programs), and confirm that
service plans developed are attainable based on available maintenance resources
and expected fleet availability and condition. The agency’s service levels
determine the fleet utilization and service miles, which translate directly into
preventive maintenance requirements and estimated corrective maintenance
levels and help determine the overall railcar maintenance budget. Therefore,
service planning requires input from the railcar maintenance department to
ensure the service levels can be achieved within the constraint of the overall
operating budget. Usually, it is an iterative process to find a level of service
balancing fleet capabilities, ridership demand, and fare revenue (see call-out box
below).

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Reconciling Service Planning

with the Fleet Operating Budget
As part of one commuter rail agency’s annual budget process, the staff creates
a “ridership budget”—the expected ridership for the forthcoming year based on
planned service levels. The agency uses the ridership budget to estimate fare
revenue. Before the final budget is approved, the agency works to reconcile
the service plan, ridership forecast, and fare revenue to ensure that the agency
does not commit to unsustainable revenue service. If the planned service cannot
generate sufficient ridership and fare recovery, then the service plan is rebalanced
to an acceptable level (12).

Over the long term, service planning is reflected in the agency’s long-term plan.
The long-range plan reflects the agency’s prospects for upgrading and expanding
the system. The long range plan must be consistent with the fleet management
plan, which describes the agency’s fleet requirements to meet the service levels
planned over the long term. Railcar maintenance managers are responsible for
ensuring the fleet management plan reflects realistic assumptions for meeting
the long-range plan’s service levels. Historical data from the computerize
maintenance management system (CMMS) and fleet condition assessments
help provide an analytical basis for a realistic fleet management plan. Such data
helps to develop more accurate forecasts of future fleet capabilities and funding
needs. The railcar maintenance department is responsible for using such
information to verify that maintenance budget levels in the long-range plan are
consistent with the expected needs of the railcar fleet as set forth in the fleet
management plan.

Railcar Maintenance’s Role

in Lifecycle Management Planning
As described in the FTA’s Asset Management Guide (61), a lifecycle management
plan documents the costs, performance, and risks associated with an asset class
throughout its useful life and the associated activities to address and optimize
each of these factors. Lifecycle management plans are featured in this section
because they are a valuable planning tool to help railcar maintenance programs
think comprehensively about their diverse fleet management activities, improve
cross-functional collaboration, and better allocate maintenance resources and
capital funding. Lifecycle management plans can also document the department’s
strategy for deploying ongoing performance improvement approaches like
Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Total Productive maintenance.

A lifecycle management plan explicitly draws connections between each

phase of a railcar’s lifecycle (see Figure 4-2) to ensure actors in each phase

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collaborate with upstream and downstream stakeholders and maintain a broad

understanding of their goals and responsibilities in the asset lifecycle. Most
importantly, the lifecycle management plan can directly support the agency’s
capital programming and O&M budgeting processes, as well as the department’s
own budget and work planning processes.

Figure 4-2
Lifecycle
Management
Activities

The fleet management plan is often the closest document most transit agencies
have to a lifecycle management plan for railcars. Examples presented in this section
show how agencies have developed fleet management plans and railcar maintenance
plans that effectively serve the functions of a lifecycle management plan. When a
formal railcar lifecycle management plan is in place, the agency’s railcar maintenance
department is typically the owner of the plan, responsible for its development and
update. Potentially, an agency could have a lifecycle management plan or sub-plan
for each railcar model or have a single plan that covers all of an agency’s railcars.

Some of the benefits associated with the use of lifecycle management plans include
the following:

• Provides a basis for data-driven, informed fleet capital investment and

preventive maintenance decisions to minimize overall lifecycle costs;

• Establishes performance improvement processes to maximize the reliability and
maintainability of the fleet throughout its lifecycle;
• Identifies specific employees responsible for each railcar lifecycle management
activity, including supporting roles such as IT and inventory management
support;
• Improves fleet lifecycle cost and performance through the documentation of formal
cross-department coordination processes over the course of a railcar’s useful life.

The contents of a lifecycle management plan will vary depending on the

level of asset management maturity for the railcar fleet. While a less mature
lifecycle management plan will focus simply on defining preventive maintenance

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strategies and practices, a more mature lifecycle management plan will include
policies for condition assessment practices, performance monitoring and
improvement, guidelines for the management of documentation of procedures
and plans for preventive and reactive maintenance, practices for managing
facilities and equipment resources, and collaboration with related functions
like purchasing, inventory, and capital programming. A mature railcar lifecycle
management plan also addresses the railcar maintenance department’s
performance improvement approach, including deployment of strategies like
RCM and TPM, and critical labor issues such as training and skills development
and technology needs and management.

Factors Defining Fleet Investment

and Lifecycle Management Requirements
Fleet management plans are required by FTA and typically fulfill many of the functions of an asset
lifecycle management plan. Southern California’s commuter rail service, Metrolink, developed a
fleet management plan based on a comprehensive analysis of both supply- and demand-side factors
determining fleet needs, as shown below.

Demand-Side Factors Supply-Side Factors

v Demand Analysis v Current railcar inventory

• Forecast growth in passenger trips and • Capacity
passenger miles • Mileage
• Service expansion • Service usage
• Load factors • Lease agreements
v Regulatory requirements v Vehicle utilization rate and spare ratio
• EPA diesel engine requirements v Rehabilitation/overhaul requirements
• Positive train control v Analysis of available funding by source and
v Railcar upgrades allowable purpose
v Safety improvements
v Passenger improvements

Although the plan is relatively brief, it prepares a thorough analysis, including multiple scenarios
based on the framework above, resulting in a well-defined plan to allocate limited resources for
railcar maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. The plan only covers only five years, a shorter
timeframe than typical, which may have the benefit that, as the plan is updated more frequently, it
has greater value as a practical, living document (13).

For each process, activity, or technical standard mentioned the lifecycle

management plan, it is helpful to include a reference supporting documentation
that provides a higher level of detail. A lifecycle management plan is one way
to track key maintenance documentation and ensure it remains up-to-date. A

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lifecycle management plan can also be used to ensure that the performance
expectations of the railcar fleet are understood and fit within the agency’s
broader goals and performance objectives, and that all investment decisions
are transparent and well communicated. Table 4-2 provides the recommended
contents of a railcar lifecycle management plan.

Table 4-2
Lifecycle Management Plan Contents24

Section Name Contents Description

Roles and Responsibilities Outlines roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities for the railcar fleet’s lifecycle
(Who is responsible for management, including designating a manager responsible for overall fleet lifecycle
this railcar fleet’s lifecycle management and cross-functional coordination.
management activities?)
Fleet Inventory Introduces the railcar fleet, including:
(What assets are included in • Inventory and criticality of assets
this lifecycle management plan?) • Expected changes in the inventory
• Expected service requirements.
Fleet Policy and Strategy Outlines any policies and strategies related to this railcar fleet. It also explains
(What are the asset how the railcar fleet’s lifecycle management activities support the broader asset
management goals for this management policies and goals (including level of service requirements and
railcar fleet?) sustainability outcomes).
Condition Assessment and Outlines the fleet’s current condition and references the documented railcar fleet-
Performance Monitoring specific approach to condition assessments and performance monitoring. This includes
(How will the railcar fleet’s outlining when the railcars should be inspected, how inspections will be conducted and
performance be measured and condition measured, and what actions should be taken based on the rating assigned.
monitored?)
Preventive Maintenance Plan Outlines the preventive and predictive maintenance approach25 to maximize the
(What activities can be performance and minimize the costs of this railcar fleet. This section also describes
proactively completed?) the resources (costs, staffing, materials, etc.) needed to meet expected rolling stock
maintenance needs and links these to fleet performance.
Rehabilitation and Outlines the rehabilitation and replacement approach26 to maxe the performance
Replacement Plan and minimize the costs of this railcar fleet. This describes the resources needed
(What capital investments are (costs, staffing, materials, etc.) and explains and links to performance.
needed?)
Lifecycle Management Outlines all remaining lifecycle management activities, including considerations
Supporting Functions and strategies regarding procurement, warrantees, materials and purchasing,
(What are additional activities information technology, and disposal. This section also describes the resources
are necessary for maximizing needed from other departments, including IT, HR, etc.
the performance of this railcar
fleet?)
Capital Program and Forecasts the capital and operations and maintenance budget and other resources
Operating Budget needed to address the lifecycle needs of this railcar fleet. The budgeting timeframe
(How will asset management should match the agency’s overall capital and operations and maintenance budgeting
support capital programming timeframes. This section may also cover expected lifecycle costs of the fleet.
and operations and
maintenance budgeting?)
Performance Modeling Identifies how available data can be used to evaluate how well the railcar fleet is
(How will asset condition data achieving its level of service, sustainability, and other performance goals. Historic
support scenario evaluation?) data (compiled into decay curves) and current data can be used to monitor
performance over time and forecast how different funding levels can impact
performance in the future.
Continuous Improvement Outlines how the railcar maintenance department manages performance
(How can we ensure we improvement, including overall framework and specific processes and strategies. This
continue to get better at section should capture any key challenges facing the department and fleet, together
managing this railcar fleet?) with specific actions to address these and progress in doing so. Additionally, it should
reflect the process for maintaining the lifecycle management plans.

Source: Rose, et al. (61)

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24
Lifecycle management plan contents will vary depending on the level of asset management maturity associated with the railcar fleet.
25
This section may be developed based on the original equipment manufacturers’ (OEM) guidelines; however, adjustments should be
made reflecting past experience and local requirements, in consultation with the OEMs if possible.
26
Ibid.

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Ideally, a lifecycle management plan is developed as part of the railcar fleet’s

procurement stage to ensure it is designed and manufactured in a way that
considers the railcar’s performance requirements, maintainability, equipment
and facility needs, and total cost of ownership. However, it can be created at
any time and should be updated regularly as maintenance and other lifecycle
management practices change. Key implementation principles associated with
lifecycle management planning include the following:

• While many parties will likely provide input into the plan, there is a railcar
fleet “owner” responsible for coordinating the development and upkeep of
the lifecycle management plan. The “owner” is typically a representative from
the railcar maintenance department.
• Lifecycle management plans are developed with input from all departments
that are involved in the railcar fleet’s lifecycle. Represented parties likely
include procurement, engineering, transportation operations, maintenance,
and capital planning. Representatives may also support a cross-functional
technical advisory committee supporting cross functional performance
improvement.
• When possible, require the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to

document in detail the lifecycle management requirements (including

scheduled maintenance and overhaul requirements, testing and diagnostic

equipment, and drawings and other technical documentation) as part of

the railcar fleet’s procurement with consideration for the agency’s specific
operating environment. An agency’s operating experience with the fleet and
funding availability may lead to different actions, but the OEM provides the
baseline lifecycle management practices.
• An agency evaluates cost, risk, and performance to determine the optimal
amount of preventive maintenance for the railcar fleet. There is an optimal
amount of planned maintenance for railcars that minimizes the cost of
planned vs. reactive maintenance. This evaluation requires experience,
understanding of railcar deterioration, repair methods, and, ideally, the use of
analysis tools.
• Lifecycle management plans support the performance measurement system
and set key performance targets and benchmarks for the railcar maintenance
program. They are continually updated to reflect changes in the operating
environment, condition assessment technologies, and manufacturer

guidelines.

• Railcar maintenance staff review and update lifecycle management plans as

part of the budgeting process. The owner should use the railcar lifecycle
management plan not only for fleet and resource planning, but also to track
reviews of and updates to preventive maintenance practices, workforce
development activities like training, and performance improvement activities.

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• Lifecycle management plans are continually updated to reflect changes in the

operating environment, condition assessment technologies, and manufacturer
guidelines.
• Lifecycle management plans are made available on an agency’s intranet (or other
shared file location) so management and staff can freely access the information.

Chicago Transit Authority

Rail Car Maintenance Plan
The Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) Rail Car Maintenance Plan provides a
counterpoint to Metrolink’s Fleet Plan, focusing on the railcar maintenance
department’s role and providing much more detail on maintenance-related
lifecycle management activities. The document provides an overview of the
department’s preventive and capital maintenance (capital maintenance can
include equipment upgrades, overhauls, and rehabilitations) resources and
practices.

It begins by outlining the agency’s railcar maintenance goals. Key goals cover
vehicle availability (defined as sufficient vehicles to meet scheduled service),
reliability (mean miles between reported defects), budget (cost per vehicle
mile), overtime use, scheduled vs. unscheduled maintenance share (based on
cost), and facility cleanliness.

The maintenance plan proceeds by describing the agency’s fleet, including

upcoming changes, and maintenance resources, including staff, facilities,
equipment, CMMS, and training. The plan devotes special attention to the role
of the Rail Engineering and Technical Services (RETS) group, which provides
ongoing engineering support for new vehicle and other procurements,
technical support for maintenance, purchasing, other functions, quality
assurance including QA/QC of CMMS data and post-maintenance QA
inspections, quality improvement support such as trainings, development of
manuals, and reliability studies. The heart of the Rail Car Maintenance Plan is
its overview of the scheduled maintenance program. It defines each preventive
maintenance inspection, the quarter-life overhaul, and the mid-life overhaul.
Finally, the plan covers the expected costs of the maintenance program. The
plan’s appendices reference key supporting documents, including bulletins,
manuals, training programs, and sample reports.

CTA’s 1986 railcar maintenance plan emphasizes maintenance budgeting

and vehicle replacement planning. The 2010 maintenance plan shows an
evolution toward a broader strategy that manages and allocates CTA’s railcar
maintenance resources based on high level strategies and a performance
measurement framework. CTA’s current maintenance plan provides an
effective roadmap for a lifecycle management approach to maintaining the
agency’s railcar assets (11) (14).

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Railcar Maintenance Budget

and Work Planning
While the lifecycle management plan looks at the overall maintenance
program, it needs the support of more detailed budgeting and work planning of
activities to effectively predict and manage costs and resources. For instance,
the implementation of a new maintenance approach such as total productive
maintenance (see Section 3, “Total Productive Maintenance”) requires program
planning to underwrite the change management process. Work planning would
include mapping out specific implementation steps, assigning staff time, and
developing a program budget and schedule.

Work planning usually begins with the development of the railcar maintenance
department’s annual work plan and budget. The work plan and budget provide
the specific detail necessary to implement the actions identified in the lifecycle
management plan and the capital plan, as well as any special projects identified
by the railcar maintenance director. The budget and work plan accounts for
expected major events in the year, such as a major procurement, new maintenance
equipment, facility work, new technology or updates, especially to the CMMS, and
rehabilitations. The budget is based on asset histories and forecasts to provide the
most realistic scenarios possible.

The railcar maintenance department’s operating budget is typically developed using

a bottom-up, activity-based approach, starting with at the level of the individual
railcar. Two year budgeting is a common practice to create a more workable time
horizon (3), (4). A more detailed approach with bottom-up data helps to ensure the
accuracy of the budget and reduce the risk of unforeseen costs and issues (1).

Development of a bottom-up operating budget and work plan include the

following actions:

1. Use asset inventory—including vehicle age, condition data, and maintenance

backlog—to compile expected maintenance needs—including all preventive
maintenance requirements and the likely level of corrective maintenance.
2. Compile costs (labor, materials, contracted work, etc.) associated with

expected maintenance needs.

3. Identify any supporting activities to be considered (process development,

training, performance improvement).

4. Identify any investments to be considered (new software, new equipment,

facilities upgrades, etc.).

5. Make initial budget request.

6. Prioritize activities based on final budget.
7. Develop schedule of activities based on funding available.

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The development of the annual work plan and budget is an opportunity to

communicate with teams and departments in maintenance and identify
potential issues. The process helps commit the maintenance organization to
the plan.

For the operating budget, agencies typically use a line-item cost model. Fixed
costs such as software licenses and facility operation costs do not vary with
the level of maintenance service provided and should experience less variation.
Variable costs may depend on a variety of factors, including the actual fleet miles
and reliability (1), (5). Sophisticated agencies support their cost modeling with
scenario analysis to show how varying funding levels impact key performance
indicators, such as fleet reliability, availability, backlog, and condition to support
decision-making (6), (7). In order to ensure consistency, elements of the
maintenance operating budget may correspond to activities defined in the railcar
lifecycle management plan.

Once the work plan is in place, each of its components can be mapped to a
particular budget line item. Managers put the work plan into action by scheduling
and assigning work orders, such as programmed preventive maintenance
inspections, and projects. As the work orders are completed, they debit costs
from the assigned budget line item in the accounting system. An important
feature of a contemporary CMMS is that it provides a high detail of financial
transparency, tying work to resources like employees and assets like vehicles
or vehicle systems. The traceability of costs gives managers insight into the
cost of work plan activities, the value they create, and trends in both over time.
Management can use the data to evaluate productivity, capacity, and backlog.
The work order system also provides the basis for activity-based costing, which
is useful for budgeting because managers can project the needed maintenance
activities over the budget period and project costs based on the historically
required resources, such as labor, parts, and equipment, and their associated
costs (3), (4).

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Key Success Factors

Ø Representatives from the railcar maintenance department are involved
in the agency’s strategic planning process. Maintenance should be an
equal party in agency-wide planning processes related to fleet and
service planning.
Ø Railcar Maintenance should participate in strategic planning, service
planning, and financial planning discussions to ensure that funding
allocations for fleet management—including labor, information
technology, materials, and training—support the agency’s overall
service strategy.
Ø Managers provide input to the long range plan and the fleet
management plan to ensure these consider the maintenance
implications of future capital projects, service expansions, and vehicle
procurements.
Ø Railcar maintenance staff supports railcar procurement and design
activities to ensure that new rolling stock is easily maintainable and its
total cost of ownership is minimized. Railcar fleet lifecycle management
plans are an important tool to formalize such collaboration.
Ø Managers use lifecycle management plans to improve management of
the fleet’s performance and lifecycle costs and inform their capital and
operating budget decisions.
Ø Managers develop an annual or biennial work plan that implements
the strategies and actions identified in the fleet lifecycle management
plans.
Ø The department bases its annual operating budget on bottom-up work
planning.

Sources
1. Peng, Kern. 2012. Maintenance Management Logistics. Equipment Management
in the Post-Maintenance Era. New York: CRC Press.
2. Federal Transit Administration. 2012. Asset Management Guide. Washington,
DC: Federal Transit Administration.
3. Al-Hammad, Abdul-Mohsen. 2011. Architectural engineering course 524:
Facilities maintenance management lectures. King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals. http://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/ARE/amhammad/ARE­
524-course-web/ARE-524-Syllabus.doc.
4. Mirghani, Mohamed Ali. 2009. Guidelines for budgeting and costing
planned maintenance services. In Ben-Daya, Mohamed, et al., Handbook of
Maintenance Management and Engineering. London: Springer-Verlag.

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5. Duffuaa, Salih O., and Haroun, Ahmed E. 2009. Maintenance control. In

Ben-Daya, Mohamed, et al., Handbook of Maintenance Management and
Engineering. London: Springer-Verlag.
6. Washington State Department of Transportation. Guide to preparing your
vehicle maintenance plan. Washington State Department of Transportation,
August.
7. Texas Department of Transportation, Public Transportation Division.
2003. Maintenance Management and Safety Guide. Texas Department of
Transportation, March.
8. Gallucci, Grace, Goodworth, John, and Laver, Rick. 2011. Chicago Regional
Transportation Authority: A regional approach to a State of Good Repair.
3rd State of Good Repair Roundtable, Atlanta, GA: Federal Transit
Administration, July 20–22.
9. Gallucci, Grace, Goodworth, John and Allen, John G. 2012. Asset condition
assessment at Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority. Washington, DC:
Transportation Research Board, 91st Annual Meeting.
10. Dawson, Leah. 2011. Chicago Transit Authority: Transit asset management
system. 3rd State of Good Repair Roundtable, Atlanta, GA: Federal Transit
Administration, July 20–22.
11. Chicago Transit Authority. 2010. Rail car maintenance plan. November.
12. Sound Transit. 2012. Proposed 2012 Budget. Central Puget Sound Regional
Transit Authority, September.
13. Southern California Regional Rail Authority. 2012. Metrolink Fleet Plan:
2012–2017. Los Angeles, CA: Southern California Regional Rail Authority,
January 10.
14. Chicago Transit Authority. 1986. Maintenance and replacement plan for rapid
transit cars in revenue service, June.

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 Performance Measurement
5

SECTION

for Fleet Management

This section describes how railcar maintenance managers can use performance
measurement to monitor implementation of the maintenance program and align
complex operations with overall department and agency goals. The section covers
how to select performance measures, establish a baseline, communicate performance
data, and use performance measures to support decision-making.

Introduction to
Performance Measurement
As part of their oversight and direction of the railcar maintenance program,
managers need to know what maintenance work is being performed and
whether it is realizing the intended outcomes. Performance measurement
is a data-driven management control approach to track all activities and
investments throughout the railcar’s lifecycle against an agency’s goals. Typically,
these goals revolve around service levels, customer satisfaction, safety, and
cost-effectiveness. In support of these enterprise goals, the railcar maintenance
department has key objectives related to the following areas:

1. Meeting the fleet requirements of the transportation operations

department

2. Controlling lifecycle costs in general and maintenance costs in particular

3. Ensuring a high quality experience for the customer

Within the railcar maintenance department, the performance measurement

function provides a ground-up framework for tracking and delivering these
objectives and evaluating the effectiveness of the department’s railcar
maintenance strategies. The department’s performance measurement
program monitors all major business processes—such as the fleet preventive
maintenance program, in-service incident response, inventory management,
project management of capital projects, and workforce planning—with the
intent of linking decision-making to the railcar’s overall lifecycle management
and the agency’s overall goals.

An effective performance measurement program has the following benefits for

the railcar maintenance program and fleet operations:

• Assists managers in setting implementation milestones and ongoing

performance goals that support the agency’s overall objectives

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• Measures progress in reaching milestones and achieving the overall strategy

and objectives, identifies emerging performance issues, and supports
continuous performance improvement
• Improves communication of and accountability to the railcar maintenance
department’s overall business strategy and goals
• Ensures consistency in objectives among all organizational levels of the

department

• Provides an objective baseline for comparison (especially when

benchmarked against other transit agencies or related industries)

• Provides a framework for decision-making around performance issues (1),

(2), (3), (4)

Performance measurement is also a way for managers to communicate

with frontline employees and share a vision throughout the maintenance
organization. Maintenance departments are as prone to operating in silos as
any other organization. Because they do not necessarily interface directly with
transit operations staff or transit customers, railcar maintenance employees
may sometimes not be well engaged with the overall enterprise goals.
Performance measurement is an important management tool to help workers
understand their own performance and connect their own work with upstream
and downstream activities and to the agency’s overall objectives.

This section shows how the performance management process can help railcar
maintenance managers direct their efforts and improve their decision-making. It
describes how railcar maintenance managers can establish and use high quality
performance measures. It also covers some practical considerations regarding
performance measurement, including the use of the computerized maintenance
management system (CMMS) and data quality assurance. Managers and staff
can use the information to improve their oversight of the maintenance railcar
program and better understand how to improve operations. Table 5-3, at the
end of this section, provides example performance measures across the railcar
maintenance functions.

Establishing Railcar Maintenance

Performance Measures
A performance measurement program collects information from diverse
sources within the organization and packages it in performance reports for
specific audiences to inform their decision making, planning, and actions.
Performance data sources include condition inspections, day-to-day
maintenance activities, periodic audits, or on-board vehicle technologies.
Railcar maintenance managers need to identify performance measures that will
be useful, informative, and timely for various agency stakeholders. This section
describes how to select such performance measures.

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Types of Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

Each performance measure typically relates to a particular railcar maintenance
activity or process and needs to provide clear information on the railcar
maintenance program’s success in implementing a specific goal. Most performance
measures fall under the five performance characteristics related to either
maintenance process inputs or outputs.

• Efficiency measures look at maintenance inputs and consider the level of

resources used to produce a certain level of output. For example, standard
work times provide an efficiency benchmark which managers can compare
against actual work times from the CMMS. A vehicle system’s mean cost to
repair is another measure of efficiency.
• Productivity indicators are similar to efficiency measures but focus on
output, measuring the level of production over the course of a given time
period. A maintenance team’s output level in repairs per hour, shift, or week is
an example of a productivity performance measure.
• Quality/Effectiveness measures focus on outputs and evaluate the degree to
which the organization’s output meets operational requirements and expectations.
Quality/effectiveness measures are often customer-focused. Mean distance
between failures is one measure of service quality related to railcar maintenance.
• Timeliness measures also evaluate maintenance outputs and examine the
extent to which the actual work completed conforms to the planned work
schedule. The percentage of preventive maintenance completed on-time is a
measure of railcar maintenance timeliness.
• Safety and related measures look at both maintenance inputs and outputs
and track the ability of the organization to complete its work while maintaining
the well-being of its customers, employees, and third parties. Near misses
are a measure of worker safety and an example of an input-side performance
measure for safety. The condition of safety-critical systems provides one
example of an output-side measure of safety performance (3), (5).

Note that a given performance measure may cover multiple characteristics. For
example, peak hour revenue vehicle availability measures both productivity (how
many peak service vehicle hours the maintenance department is delivering from
the existing fleet) and service quality and effectiveness (how well the maintenance
department is meeting the needs of the transportation operations department).

Another consideration in selecting performance measures is to look at leading vs.

lagging indicators and the use of aggregate indicators.

• Leading indicators are measurements of some aspect of the transit

system that provide an early indication of success or failure in meeting a
goal. Leading indicators are valuable because they allow the transit agency
to anticipate issues and avoid unnecessary costs. For example, condition

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monitoring allows maintenance staff to forecast failure risk for vehicle systems
and components and allows mechanics to proactively address issues and
better time maintenance activities. Condition-based maintenance helps transit
agencies avoid the costs of both unnecessary repairs and of failures. As another
example, the size of the preventive maintenance deferment or backlog is a
leading indicator for future reactive maintenance levels and overall maintenance
costs and capital needs.
• Lagging indicators are measurements of the transit system that provide an
“after the fact” measurement of success or failure in meeting a goal. A lagging
indicator is less preferable but is often the easiest information to collect.
For areas where trends emerge slowly, the time delay for a lagging indicator
may not be a significant drawback. As an example of a lagging indicator,
employee productivity measurements could serve as a lagging indicator of the
effectiveness of a training course (5).
• Aggregate indicators can be helpful to summarize performance information to
an easily digestible level of detail. For example, some maintenance organizations
use an overall index to track performance broadly over time. Overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE) is one such performance index and is discussed in the call-out
box below. However, managers should recognize the limitations and drawbacks
of aggregate or high-level performance measures which, for instance, can wipe
out differences in performance apparent across assets, teams, and locations (3).

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is the preferred single performance
index for the total productive maintenance approach because it captures
multiple key measures of maintenance performance. The idea behind
an OEE metric is that many small improvements can have a measurable
aggregate effect and that overall performance is the most important focus
of a maintenance organization. The OEE metric is the product of three
factors: vehicle availability, productivity, and performance. For transit vehicle
maintenance, these factors are defined as follows:

Total Time Available for Operation

Availability =
Scheduled Time

Total Actual Kilometers

Productivity =
Scheduled Kilometers

Number of Runs without Failure

Quality =
Total Runs

OEE is defined as
OEE = Availability × Productivity × Quality. (15)

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Finally, the performance management program should comprehensively cover the

department’s maintenance activities. It helps managers understand whether the
organization is effectively deploying resources to execute its planned work and
whether the railcar vehicle maintenance department is achieving its overall goals.
Examples of work activities to monitor (potentially in a dashboard report), includes:

• Railcar lifecycle management activities, including daily inspections, preventive

maintenance inspections, system overhauls, and, as applicable, vehicle
overhauls, engineering, and procurement activities
• Key projects, like a major rehabilitation program, an important engineering
project, like the upgrade of a propulsion system, or an important supporting
project, such as the implementation of a new CMMS
• Department resources, including its workforce, equipment and facilities, and
budget.
• Key support processes and business systems, such as purchasing and materials
management and performance of the CMMS

It is important to avoid falling into the trap of only measuring what is easy to
measure. Transit agencies must ensure their performance reporting provides
a comprehensive view of maintenance operations. Including some things
simply because they are easy to measure (e.g., mean time between failures)
and excluding other things that are difficult to measure (e.g., cost to complete
maintenance activities) is counterproductive. With a new performance
measurement system, it may be necessary to adjust business processes or
reporting practices to collect new data. What is most important is the value of
the data collected (3).

This report covers each of these areas and provides example key performance
indicators for each at the end of this section.

As part of developing and reviewing performance dashboard reports, it is helpful

to establish a useful timeframe or frequency for reporting each performance
metric (6). When a performance measure experiences significant variability, it is
possible that the reporting timeframe is too short or too long. High variability
may indicate the influence of random short-term events (e.g., severe weather,
city events, or organizational changes). Such short-term variation removes the
ability to easily interpret a change and thereby lessens the value of the indicator.
A moving average can compensate for such variance and help managers better
identify real trends. For instance, the railcar maintenance OEE performance index
introduced above provides a useful long-run measure of overall maintenance
performance, so it makes sense to use a moving average to reduce the influence
of short-run variance.

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Performance Measures’ Relationship to Department

and Agency Goals
As described previously, railcar vehicle performance metrics should clearly
tie to the department’s and the agency’s overall goals. With respect to railcar
maintenance, most metrics should support three main goals: meeting the
transportation operations department’s needs, controlling lifecycle costs,
and ensuring a high quality experience for the customer. Table 5-1 shows the
relationship between department objectives and its high-level performance
measures. The high-level performance measures answer key questions related to
each of the overall department goals.
Table 5-1
Relationship between Department Goals and Performance Factors
Railcar Maintenance Type of
Performance Measure Example Improvement Strategy
Department Goals Measure
Availability Percent of Meeting Transportation Productivity Improve collaboration with Inventory
revenue vehicles Operations’ Needs: Are there Management function to reduce vehicles
available for peak sufficient vehicle ready for down for parts (see Section 7, “Railcar
hour service revenue service? Maintenance Facility Projects”)
Reliability Revenue fleet’s Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Quality/ Implement or expand use of reliability
mean distance Is preventive maintenance Effectiveness centered (see Section 3, “Reliability-
between performed effective? Centered Maintenance”)
mechanical/
technical issue
On-time Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Timeliness Improve lifecycle management planning
completion Is scheduled maintenance (see Section 4, “Railcar Maintenance’s
of scheduled completed as planned? Role in Lifecycle Management Planning”)
maintenance
Maintainability Maintenance cost Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Is Efficiency Enhancement of the CMMS to better
per vehicle the department successfully track costs and improve performance
managing vehicle maintenance management (see Section 7,
costs? “Information Technology Support”)
Preventive Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Efficiency Use process management to continually
maintenance Is the department repairing improve work processes (see Section 3,
mean time to vehicles efficiently? “Pillar #1”)
repair
Condition Vehicle condition High Quality Customer Quality/ Use quality assurance measures to
(rating 1 through Experience: Does each revenue Effectiveness reduce comebacks/improve repair
5) vehicle used in service have a quality (see Section 3, “Pillar #2)
condition rating of at least 4?
Customer High Quality Customer Quality/ Use quality circles to improve the
perception Experience: Are revenue Effectiveness ease of cleaning and address causes of
of vehicle vehicles being kept clean for dirtiness (see Section 3, “Pillar #2”)
cleanliness passengers?
Safety Open safety/risk High Quality Customer Safety System redesign/upgrade as part of
issues; safety/risk Experience: Is the department a mid-life overhaul (see Section 3,
issues close in successfully addressing potential “Reliability-Centered Maintenance”)
last period safety issues as they arise?
Workforce safety Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Safety Use mistake proofing to address safety-
incidents Is the department providing a related human factors (see Section 3,
safe working environment for “Pillar #1”)
employees?
Financial Adherence to Controlling Lifecycle Costs: Is Efficiency Improve leadership training to enhance
budget the department in line with its budget and project management skills
budget target? (see Section 6, “Providing Targeted
Training for Railcar Maintenance
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These high-level goals and performance measures need to translate down to

consistent objectives and metrics for frontline workers. Figure 5-1 provides
an example showing how the reliability-related performance measures at
each level roll up into the next higher level, ensuring consistency between
organizational levels and a direct relationship between detailed functional level
performance measures and high-level measures for top management. At the
high level, the fleet mean distance between failures metric is owned by the
Director of Maintenance and might be used to understand whether there is
need to invest further in Reliability-Centered Maintenance efforts, to inform
an update to quality assurance processes, or to provide direction for a new
vehicle procurement. At the maintenance division¬¬ level, the top vehicle
system failure rates metric helps the supervisor understand which systems and
functional teams are driving overall reliability fleet reliability at the division. At
the level of the truck shop, the foreman can use the reliability statistics and
comebacks metric to understand reliability issues related to the truck shop’s
work. These metrics have a clear relationship to each other and ensure that
each manager is working toward the same goal. Note that it is important to
update performance reports regularly to reflect changes to the organization’s
strategies and action plans.

Figure 5-1
Performance

Management

at Various

Organizational

Levels

Source: Adapted from Kumar and Parida (6)

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Performance metrics should play a central role in the allocation of resources

for performance improvement and in identifying and prioritizing investments
related to railcar lifecycle management and maintenance. For example, setting
and tracking a target for mean distance between failures (MDBF) directly
supports the agency’s overall reliability goals by tracking the frequency
of in-service mechanical failures. By evaluating each project in the railcar
maintenance department’s draft capital projects list against key performance
metrics like MDBF, it is possible to establish which projects best address the
causes of in-service failures and will best support performance improvement.
A similar process applies in the railcar maintenance program’s budget and
work planning process, for instance in the development of an annual training
program.

Establishing a Performance Baseline

The maintenance program may wish to conduct a baseline assessment to
better understand a maintenance program’s existing strengths and weaknesses,
expand on the maintenance vision, and to prioritize specific areas (e.g.,
computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) business processes,
maintenance culture, quality assurance, equipment quality) for improvement and
investment. The baseline assessment should address strategic, technical, process,
administrative, and cultural issues.27 To gather information for the assessment
process, managers can use supporting management control measures such as
those covered in the call-out box below. The “Key Success Factors” sections
presented throughout this report provide one high-level assessment approach.

27
The Reliability-Centered Maintenance process is one approach to develop a performance baseline and
prioritize performance improvement for rolling stock.

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Management Control Measures

The performance management program is one of many control measures that
organizations can deploy oversee and direct operations. However, it is the most
important control tool because it provides managers with critical information
for decision making related to their division, department, or team’s operations.
Performance management uses metrics and data to monitor maintenance
implementation and align the work of diverse teams with each other and
the overall organization. Performance management enables managers and
employees to focus on objectives and outcomes.

Other management control tools for maintenance tend to be more focused and
include:

• Audits – audits may be performed by the agency’s internal audit

function or an outside entity. Typically audits focus on a specific aspect
of operations and evaluate whether the maintenance program is using
general or industry standards of practice. Quality assurance audits
in particular are widely used to review the effectiveness of railcar
maintenance activities.
• Budgeting – the budgeting process is the maintenance program’s best
opportunity to exert financial control over the maintenance process and
to understand past failures in budgeting and financial control. Through the
course of the fiscal year, budgets also provide an important benchmark for
the maintenance program’s progress and performance. The CMMS should
track the budget and support comparison with actual progress and costs
to help identify performance issues. Such information can feed into key
financial statistics for the performance management program.
• Lifecycle management planning – lifecycle management planning
is an approach to optimize asset management practices, including
maintenance, over the long term. It works to integrate the decision
making of all functional groups touching an asset like a railcar. Lifecycle
cost analysis is the main tool behind lifecycle management planning,
providing a useful model for maintenance decisions for both the overall
fleet and individual vehicles.
• Statistical process control tools – these statistical approaches use the
data created by maintenance, inspection, and testing activities as well as
special sampling to support quality control, reliability engineering, and
process improvement. Statistical techniques can help understand hidden
quality issues and otherwise latent relationships to drive performance
improvement, but they require focused effort and are often a way of
exploring an issue identified by the performance management program.

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Management Control Measures (cont.)

• Functional, system, and process diagramming – the creation of

schematics which document maintenance processes and the functions
of assets serves as a basis for a variety of performance improvement
analyses, such as the identification of failures causes, the identification of
process bottlenecks, and mapping of process costs. Such diagrams are an
important way of efficiently recording information for managers, provide
them a basis for comparison with observations, and help them quickly
understand the likely consequences of performance issues or changes to
systems or processes.
• Employee surveys and assessments – employee surveys and assessments
can be helpful tool for understanding employee satisfaction and
engagement, skill gaps, and other workforce issues. Low cost and free
electronic services make the administration of surveys and assessment
quick and efficient with output data that is easy to analyze.
• Work measurement – work measurement involves the creation of
time and resource standards for jobs. Work standards benchmark the
efficiency and productivity of individual workers. They also help to
identify particular maintenance jobs in need improvement either through
improved maintainability or better preventive measures.
• Inventory control – inventory control provides managers with insight into
the vehicle maintenance supply chain and supports improved performance
of the inventory and purchasing functions. Effective inventory control
ensures that the correct parts are available when they are needed (1).

Communicating Performance Data

Successful performance management involves the effective communication,
either formal or informal, of performance data. Ideally, performance reports
are distributed automatically to managers and staff in the railcar maintenance
program who are accountable for or “own” a performance measure (6). Some
agencies develop dashboard reports that filter key information that is particularly
relevant. For instance, Los Angeles Metro’s monthly Rail Fleet Services Monthly
Report selectively presents only the top reliability issues, (Figure 5-3 excerpts the
reliability data from the report), so that the manager only sees the most actionable
information in detail (7).

If frontline workers do not receive performance reports directly, managers

can share relevant performance data on a regular basis. Communication of
performance results provides an opportunity to discuss performance expectations,
operational consequences of not meeting targets, and opportunities for
improvement. It can help focus and motivate employees, especially on short-term

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goals (8), (9). Performance measurement should not be used punitively. When
issues are identified, it is important to share responsibility for fixing them and
facilitate and support teams that are not effective and cannot meet their goals.
Strategies for addressing performance issues are presented in detail in Section 3 (3).

Frontline employees can provide critical input to the performance management

program. They usually have a keen understanding of how they can influence and
even manipulate performance measures and how well the performance measures
actually provide an understanding of their work and value. Employees’ involvement
and input into the development of a new performance measurement program may
also be important to get their buy-in. Employees are more likely to resist change
when they have not had a voice in the process. Ongoing communication in both
directions helps to set expectations and determine targets (3).

Common Pitfalls in Performance Reports

• Data overload: too much data makes it difficult for the audience to hone
in on the critical issues. Unnecessary metrics should not clutter the
performance report.
• Insufficient detail: very high level summary performance data can make
it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions. The level of detail needs to
correspond to the organizational level of the audience. More granular
data are more actionable for frontline employees.
• Use of the data: performance data should arrive at useful intervals to
support decisions. Managers should use the data to determine action
items and to evaluate their business plans and decisions.
• Performance measures should link directly with the agency’s stated goals
instead of conflicting with them or having no relationship at all.
• Progress should be measured at useful intervals to reflect the rate at
which trends appear and the timing of decisions.
• It is important to focus on the customer above all else, since it is the
customer who determines the agency’s success (3).

As a final point, it is possible to have too much focus on the performance

measurement system itself. The system should be comprehensive and provide
data at an appropriate level for its audience. However, it remains just a tool.
So long as it covers important areas and is reasonably accurate, it can serve its
purpose. Most of the work takes place in the actual investigation of reasons
behind performance trends. The performance measurement system should be
regularly reviewed and updated if necessary at a reasonable interval (3).

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Data Collection and

Quality Assurance
The data on which performance indicators are based require collection, analysis,
and transmission to the appropriate staff. Ideally, data collection is automated
through information systems; however, in most railcar maintenance departments,
at least part of the data process is manual. In either case, it is important to carefully
document and oversee the data collection process to ensure the transparency
of data sources and the quality and integrity of data incorporated in the railcar
maintenance performance management program.

Data Collection
To the extent possible, performance data should be collected through the transit
agency’s various information systems carrying. These systems can include the
computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), the enterprise resource
planning (ERP) system, and any other related systems, as shown in Table 5-2.
The CMMS (discussed in more detail in Section 7, “Railcar Maintenance Facility
Projects”) is the railcar maintenance manager’s critical information system,
automating data collection to support the detailed documentation and analysis
of work completed and comparison against the department’s goals. Maintenance
workers log their work as they complete standard tasks, including inspection and
testing, standard preventive maintenance procedures, and repairs. The result is a
detailed record of the maintenance work performed (2).

Table 5-2
Typical Data Sources for Monitoring Railcar Maintenance Activities
Railcar Maintenance Activities and Resources Typical Data Source
Work order and labor records Computerized Maintenance Management System
Materials and parts inventory and use Computerized Maintenance Management System
Maintenance tools and equipment tracking Computerized Maintenance Management System
Facilities and infrastructure Computerized Maintenance Management System
Plans, procedures, and other documentation Computerized Maintenance Management System
Inspections and testing Computerized Maintenance Management System
Personnel with the appropriate skill set Enterprise Resource Planning System
External resources (contractors, etc.) Enterprise Resource Planning System
Training Enterprise Resource Planning System
Budgets and accounting Enterprise Resource Planning System
Engineering reports Product Lifecycle Management System
Operations Control Center/Computer-Aided
Operations data
Dispatch System; vehicle onboard computer
Online condition monitoring and diagnostics Vehicle onboard computer

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The CMMS and ERP can gather enormous quantities of data, and, when querying
these systems’ databases, it is often possible to calculate a given performance
measure multiple ways. Managers should make sure they clearly understand the
performance measures’ calculation and that this information is easily available to
those using the performance reports (6).

Not all performance data are collected through automated business processes. The
performance management program may include summary results from ongoing
quality assurance audits of vehicle preventive maintenance or regular employee
satisfaction surveys. In such cases, the performance management program
should include supporting documentation for these measuring processes. Clear
instructions for what measurements are taken, the frequency of measurements,
and the analysis required for the measurements gathered ensure consistency in
data collection over time. If possible, maintenance workers should record key data
collected in inspection reports in the CMMS or a related system (8).

Quality Assurance
It is critical to the integrity of the performance measurement program that there
is a coherent and comprehensive QA/QC program in place to monitor and identify
any data issues. The need for such a program holds true, in particular, for large
maintenance organizations where upper level managers have more limited insight
into daily operations from their personal observations. Common quality assurance
approaches for performance data include:

1. Job sampling – As part of quality assurance staff’s random checks of vehicle

inspections and maintenance jobs, they should verify accurate entry of data
into the CMMS. Job sampling rates are often fairly high: up to 20 percent is a
good rule of thumb for major preventive maintenance tasks, so a high level of
data quality is assured. Quality assurance audits (see Section 4, “Maintenance
Quality Assurance”) provide a similar ongoing opportunity to verify the
quality of the data being entered into information systems.
2. Certification program – A quality assurance checklist is created for each
procedure to check quality and functionality at key steps. Each test check or
test should have a clear objective outcome or standard to pass. Instituting
these validation steps through the CMMS helps ensure the checks are
completed and tracked.
3. Issue follow-up – As data errors are identified it is important to follow-up
to understand the causes of the errors and put in place corrective measures
such as training or new data validation processes.

Disciplined adherence to protocols ensures the quality of data collected through

the CMMS and its effectiveness as a management control measure (10), (11).

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Utilizing Performance Measures to

Support Management Decisions
Even with a high quality performance measurement system in place, managers
need effective processes to translate the information into decision-making
and action. This section discusses how best to apply performance measures to
support the accomplishment of rail car maintenance objectives.

Performance Targets/Benchmarking
A railcar maintenance program needs standards or targets that correspond to
each performance indicator to ensure the effectiveness of the performance
management program. A performance target provides a point of comparison to
help understand the agency’s success in the area being measured. The standard
or target should reflect an objective judgment of the performance threshold
at which the agency can reasonably be said to have accomplished its stated
objective.

Maintenance performance standards and targets can be developed based

on internal or external benchmarks. Internally, standards and targets may
involve comparison with other teams, divisions, and departments, or involve
development of an objective standard, such as a time standard. External
standards and targets, on the other hand, can be established against other
transit agencies and organizations in related industries (8), (4). When
benchmarking externally, it makes sense to focus on directly comparable areas
within a relevant set of peers. Examples areas of railcar maintenance that
make sense to benchmark externally include: inventory management, vehicle
availability, workforce injuries, and customer satisfaction. Peer industries might
include utilities, mining operations, airlines, and military operations. The focus
of benchmarks should be on world class performance standards to give a
realistic perspective on the agency’s actual performance and room for potential
improvements. Railcar maintenance managers should avoid using arbitrary
performance targets that do not correspond to a reasonable definition of
success (10).

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Transit Benchmarking: Nova

and Community of Metros
Benchmarking is an important tool for transit agencies to measure their
performance using an objective point of comparison. Montreal’s public transit
agency, the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), sought out to improve
its transit performance by benchmarking its performance with peer agencies
from around the world by participating in Nova. Nova (for agencies with less
than 500m trips/year) and Community of Metros (CoMET, for agencies with
more than 500m trips/year) are two international transit rail benchmarking
groups that collaborate through sharing performance data and best practices.
Both groups provide a forum for agencies from around the world to share
experiences and learn from each other, with a focus on performance
improvement and strategies that are transferrable.

The benchmarking process used by Nova and CoMET includes a key

performance indicators system to compare performance and identify best
practices and a web platform for sharing case studies, giving workshops, and
providing an online forum for knowledge sharing. The group is under a strict
confidentiality agreement that allows agencies to practice full disclosure with
each other. The groups serve as forums to identify opportunities for cost-
savings and improved efficiency and also to understand industry trends and
better define performance. The groups have also spurred agencies to develop
more comparable data and address some of the inconsistencies in performance
reporting across the industry.

In STM’s case, the agency was able to use its membership in Nova to
better understand its strengths and weaknesses and identify key areas
for improvement. The agency has emphasized the use of performance
management at all levels, and benchmarking was an important exercise to
ensure the agency had a realistic understanding of its baseline performance
and that upper managers had realistic overall expectations. The benchmarking
initiative showed that while STM had a very high average fleet age and lower
than average training levels, the agency was maintaining above average
reliability. The agency was also setting a world class standard for labor
productivity in operations and maintenance (16).

Labor efficiency is a key concern in railcar maintenance, and time standards

are a common type of performance standard to provide an objective
benchmark of efficiency. Typically, a time standard not only specifies an
expected duration for each step in the maintenance task; it also sets forth
the resources required for the task, as well as precise, standardized steps
to complete it. Time standards can serve as building blocks for most
maintenance management and budgeting systems because they enable work
planning and resourcing work. They help managers better understand the

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equipment and labor requirements for preventive maintenance, running

rehabilitations, and common repairs and provide a basis for financial planning
and ongoing performance measurement. The development of a time standard
for a common maintenance task can also help improve maintenance quality
and efficiency by creating explicit maintenance procedures for workers to
follow (see the time standard development approach described in the call-out
box below) (11).

Time standards are most appropriate for tasks that maintenance workers
perform regularly and that have a predictable work process. They require
diligent time accounting on work orders through the CMMS. Where actual
times exceed the standard significantly, the manager can check whether
the mechanic identified deficiencies to address or the CMMS maintenance
records provide some other explanation. In this way, the standard provides
some accountability to maintenance staff to encourage productivity and helps
managers to identify individual issues such as lack of training or deviation
from preventive maintenance procedures (12). Manpower ratios are a related
productivity standard for benchmarking staffing levels at the organizational
rather than the task level. They measure the staffing of a particular position
in full time equivalents against a standard unit such as a vehicle or 100,000
revenue miles and are useful for comparing productivity across maintenance
divisions or with other transit agency’s railcar maintenance departments (13).

The use of time standards as a management tool is evolving. Rather than

focusing too heavily on standard repair times and other productivity
standards, managers are increasingly focusing on quality, effectiveness, and
overall program efficiency measures. For instance, “comebacks” are a critical
indicator of maintenance effectiveness that managers can track to individual
employees. The adoption of approaches such as total productive maintenance
(see Section 3, “Total Productive Management”) that rely on the initiative
of frontline staff to identify and address issues and confer a high degree of
flexibility on frontline staff can be at odds with the prescriptiveness of time
standards. Moreover, employees are understandably resistant to the use
of time standards as an enforceable productivity standard (9). Still, time
standards continue to be useful for planning and budgeting and for establishing
discipline among frontline workers in their maintenance practices.

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Development of Vehicle
Maintenance Time Standards
The development of a time standard is an opportunity to reengineer the
procedure to eliminate delays, reduce transport times, and minimize
storage time. The development of a time standard begins with a process
mapping of the maintenance procedure. To understand inefficiencies in
the procedure, the review team can apply five categories of time uses to
a process map of the maintenance procedure (see Section 3, “Pillar #1,”
for more on process mapping): (1) operation: performance of the actual
maintenance procedure, (2) transport: time spent moving the vehicle or
system into place or traveling to retrieve a tool or part, (3) inspections:
examination of the system to assess condition, performance, or work
quality, (4) delays: time wasted due to interruptions or unforeseen
obstacles such as a missing part or non-functioning equipment, and (5)
Storage: inactive time where the vehicle, system, part, or worker queues for
the next activity, extending the time unavailable and reducing productivity.
Once each process step is assigned to a time category and its average
duration is measured, a summary table shows the total time needed in each
category and provides a basis for directing performance improvements to
the procedure. Examples of improvements from mapping a maintenance
procedure and establishing a time standard include:

• Analysis of the process may reveal redundant activities such as multiple

set up periods which could be eliminated by dedicating a bay for several
successive shifts or creating a temporary work station. A dedicate work
station ensures all necessary tools are on hand and that maintenance is
conducted with appropriate ergonomics.
• Conducting all the work in a single location can reduce transport costs.
• Providing a parts kit or bill of materials for the procedure can reduce
overall transport time. Transport time often leads to delay from
behavior such as stopping to chat with colleagues.
• Sequential workflow can help reduce redundant activities that result
from working on task elements in parallel.
• For maintenance procedures involving multiple mechanics, accounting
for inactive (or “storage”) time for each worker can help identify
opportunities to shift responsibilities or the order of tasks to better
balance the work among team members and improve productivity.

An effective time standard relies on actual time readings from a normal and
reasonable work pace. When targeting inefficiencies related to workers’ habits,
the focus should be on specific procedure updates. For instance, improving set
up and breakdown procedures can improve organization and reduce sporadic
trips to retrieve tools and equipment. The development of standard repair

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Development of Vehicle
Maintenance Time Standards (cont.)
times should undertaken by a credible party with expert knowledge of the
maintenance procedure. Senior mechanics with quality control responsibilities
can be a good choice. Together with a performance analyst if necessary, they
can effectively break down the maintenance procedure into discrete tasks and
note key differences among mechanics and setups (11). When establishing
a time standard, it is important to rely on the best-performing mechanics,
technicians, and shops to ensure the standard’s high quality (9).

New York City Transit has successfully used time standards as a performance
improvement process involving the development, review, standardization,
and update of maintenance procedures and documentation. The agency’s
review process emphasized the collaboration of the unions and made use of
process mapping and re-engineering to adjust the scope, bill of materials, tools,
documentation, and procedures for the repair. After finalization and approval of
the standard, the updates would be reflected in the system of record, the change
communicated to maintenance staff, and additional training given as necessary.
Once the new standard repair time had been implemented, a performance
incentive applied to employees who consistently met the standard (9), (17).

Decision Process
The primary purpose of performance indicators is to provide line-of-sight
for managers into maintenance operations. When performance indicators
indicate a performance issue, they must also support decision-making to
identify the appropriate response of the department’s management and staff.
For each performance indicator, the options to address the performance issue
can vary significantly. In some cases, maintenance workers can apply swift
corrective action to address the issue. Other cases may require concerted
long-term attention with an action plan involving multiple supporting actions.
Furthermore, some actions are only feasible during discrete windows of
opportunity. For instance, a particular reliability issue may only be cost-
effective to address as part of a major rehabilitation program that takes
vehicles out of service and require significant planning and coordination.

Nevertheless, the maintenance staff member responsible for each

performance measure should have a clear understanding of his or her
responsibility for follow-up action. The decision tree in Figure 5-2 provides
an example of how the railcar maintenance department’s truck shop might
respond to a drop in its reliability measure. The underlined responses show
the decision logic that applies.

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Figure 5-2

Sample Decision Logic Applied to Monitoring Key Performance Indicators

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Performance Improvement and Accountability

As part of the performance measurement program, all goals and associated
performance measures should be tied to a specific individual in the railcar
maintenance program. This responsible individual is usually the manager or other staff
member with the greatest control over the process that the performance measure
monitors. In general, senior management focuses on strategic measures, middle
management on operational measures, and junior management and other staff on
staff individual measures. Senior managers are responsible for ensuring the staff under
their supervision is held accountable for performance results, including explaining
and addressing performance issues. Senior managers need to use performance
measurement to proactively identify and follow up on performance issues, to
underwrite decision making, and to hold lower managers and workers accountable
(6). Accountability helps the railcar maintenance organization project its leaders’
vision and planning down to all frontline workers. The line-of-sight associated with
each performance measure needs to correspond to the maintenance department’s
organizational and accountability structure. As discussed earlier, line-of-sight ensures
oversight in each area so that responsibility flows up through the organization (3).

Managers at various levels rely on performance reports to inform both daily and
longer-term decision-making. Performance reports should have a scope appropriate
to the recipient’s roles and responsibilities: detailed performance measures for
the recipient’s areas of direct responsibility and impact and then more high-level
measures for relevant areas where the report recipient has only indirect (but
significant) impact. For example, the Director of Railcar Maintenance is responsible
for the overall reliability of the railcar fleet; therefore, the Director is accountable
for meeting the mean distance between failures measure target. Likewise, if a
particular team services railcar doors, the shop’s foreman would be responsible
for the shop’s overall effectiveness and for the failure rate shown in Figure 5-3. For
repeat failures, shown in Figure 5-4,28 a particular mechanic or team may be held
accountable for any given comeback and required to undergo special training or
institute additional quality assurance checks until the issue is resolved.

Figure 5-3
Los Angeles Metro
Rail – Top Incident
Categories,
March 2012

Source: Los Angeles Metro (7)

28
Figure 5-3 and Figure 5-4 are illustrative examples excerpted from Los Angeles Metro’s Rail Fleet Services
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Monthly Report.

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Figure 5-4
Los Angeles Metro Rail – Repeat Failures, March 2012

Source: Los Angeles Metro (7)

Because railcar maintenance staff records most or all work in the CMMS,
the department has access to detailed performance data at the level of the
individual worker, vehicle, and vehicle system. Such data support targeted
performance feedback to railcar maintenance workers at all levels. The
inclusion of broad performance measures in performance reports can provide
recipients with information to contextualize their own performance and
responsibilities and better understand the current challenges and focuses of
the both the overall maintenance program and the agency as a whole.

Merely collecting and disseminating performance data is not sufficient

for the development of alternatives to improve maintenance practices.
Performance measures must convey sufficient information to managers
about negative trends to suggest reasonable next-step actions. Analysts
supporting the maintenance department can help ensure the development of
a comprehensive and actionable performance measurement system. The same
analyst skill set is also valuable to support ongoing performance monitoring
with data-driven diagnostics and optimization of maintenance strategy and
processes (14).

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Key Success Factors

Ø Performance measures have clear line of sight to agency goals.
Ø Performance measures cover all critical department activities and
responsibilities.
Ø Performance measures provide timely and actionable information.
Ø Specific individuals have ownership of each performance measure and
any follow-up actions.
Ø The department keeps digital records of all data in a single system of
record.
Ø The department emphasizes the automated collection of data, for
instance, through work orders in the computerized maintenance
management system.
Ø Benchmarks and performance targets reflect a reasonable definition of
success for each activity measured.
Ø Performance measures are effectively communicated and follow-up
actions have clear ownership.
Ø The performance measures are periodically reviewed and updated to
reflect changes in operations and performance monitoring needs.

Table 5-3
Example Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

Railcar Maintenance Function Performance Measure Description

Percentage of vehicles available for peak
Maintenance Implementation - General Fleet Availability
revenue service
Mechanical failure/vehicle breakdown rate or
Maintenance Implementation - General Fleet Reliability
interval (miles or hours)
Overall Equipment Performance index combing availability,
Maintenance Implementation - General
Effectiveness productivity, and quality
Number of spare vehicles as a percentage of
Maintenance Implementation - Availability Spare Ratio
total fleet
Percentage of vehicles not fit for revenue
Maintenance Implementation - Availability Vehicle Condition
service; reason for each vehicle
Accounting Accuracy - Total costs charged to assets vs. total
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost
Work Orders maintenance costs
Savings from RCM/quality improvement team/
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Continuous Improvement
kaisen projects
Availability percentage for key maintenance
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Equipment Availability
equipment
High Priority/Emergency Percentage of work orders which are high
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost
Work Orders priority

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Table 5-3 (cont.)

Example Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

Railcar Maintenance Function Performance Measure Description

Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Labor Intensity Full-time equivalents per vehicle
Number of work orders/issues outstanding or
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Maintenance Backlog
overdue
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Maintenance Backlog Number of work orders open over X days
Maintenance Capacity
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Percent of maintenance capacity in use
Utilization
Maintenance cost/labor hours per vehicle
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Maintenance Efficiency
service hour
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Maintenance Intensity Maintenance cost/ asset replacement value
Labor overtime as a percentage of total labor
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Overtime Efficiency
hours
Mean cost/mean labor hours/mean time of a
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost PM/repair Efficiency
standard job
Preventive Maintenance
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Actual PM time/planned PM time
Efficiency
Number of maintenance department processes
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Process Management
with process managers
Summary of rehabilitation activities completed/
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Rehabilitation Program
overall progress/schedule adherence
Mean time from corrective issue reported to
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Response Time
repair beginning
Percentage of maintenance jobs completed
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Warranty Recovery
under warranty agreement
Percentage over materials costs recovered
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Warranty Recovery
under warranty agreement
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Work Order Closeout Average time work orders open
Work orders closed per day/total work orders
Maintenance Implementation - Maintainability/Cost Work Order Turnover
open
Corrective Maintenance Percentage of total maintenance cost due to
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability
Workload corrective maintenance
Corrective Maintenance Percentage of total corrective maintenance
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability
Workload work orders
Summary of projects in progress/summary of
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Engineering Backlog
project backlog and prioritization
Percentage of in-service mechanical failures
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Failure Follow-Up
where failure analysis was performed
Number of defects identified by operators per
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Operator-Identified Defects
run, 100,000 train miles, etc.
Percentage of total work orders generated as
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability PMI Follow-Up
part of inspections
Percentage of work orders or PM hours
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Predictive Maintenance Use
dedicated to predictive maintenance
Percentage of in-service mechanical failures
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Preventable Failures
that were preventable

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Table 5-3 (cont.)

Example Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

Railcar Maintenance Function Performance Measure Description

Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Quality Assurance Audit Percentage of work orders audited
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Rebuild Effectiveness Mean number of rebuilds to failure
Mean time to failure of system/component
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Repair Effectiveness
after repair
Repeat Maintenance/ Number of repeat jobs as a percentage of total
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability
Comebacks jobs or per thousand work orders
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Repetitive Failures Number of repetitive failures vs. total failures
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability Vehicle Condition Mean condition rating
Vehicle/System/Component Mechanical failure/vehicle breakdown rate or
Maintenance Implementation - Reliability
Reliability interval (miles or hours)
Number of vehicle accidents/safety incidents;
Maintenance Implementation - Safety Vehicle Safety
summary of each incident
Number of safety incidents/worker injuries/
Maintenance Implementation - Safety Worker Safety
near misses
Number of vehicles overdue for general
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Cleanliness
cleaning
Average number of days between general
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Cleanliness
cleaning
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Cleanliness Level of vehicle cleanliness (customer survey)
Number of maintenance-/condition-related
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Customer Complaints
customer complaints
Total delay experienced by customers
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Customer Impact of Failures attributed to mechanical failure (estimate or
customer survey)
Average length of customer delay attributed
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Customer Impact of Failures to mechanical failure (estimate or customer
survey)
Maintenance Implementation - Service Quality Failure Impact Direct and indirect costs of in-service failures
Maintenance Implementation - Sustainability Energy Consumption Energy use
Maintenance Implementation - Sustainability Environmental Incidents Number of environmental incidents/violations
Maintenance Implementation - Sustainability Waste Production Total waste production
Maintenance Implementation - Sustainability Water Consumption Volume of water use
Department’s and teams’ spending remains in
Planning Budget Adherence
line with their budgets
Planning Work Planning Annual work plan created on schedule
Workforce Attendance Absenteeism rate
Number of employees with specific critical
Workforce Critical Skills
skills
Percentage of employees meeting core/critical
Workforce Critical Trainings training requirements; summary of trainings
administered

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Table 5-3 (cont.)

Example Railcar Maintenance Performance Measures

Railcar Maintenance Function Performance Measure Description

Workforce Discipline Number of work rules violations
Workforce Labor Cost Average burdened labor rate by class
Workforce Labor effectiveness Railcar downtime per maintenance employee
Mean number of work orders per frontline
Workforce Labor productivity
maintenance employee
Workforce Training Training hours per employee
Workforce Training Need Percentage of comebacks due to lack of training
Workforce Turnover Rate Employee turnover rate for critical workers
Progress against/adherence to planned program
Vehicle Procurement Schedule Adherence
schedule
Progress against/adherence to planned program
Vehicle Procurement Budget Adherence
budget
Percentage of parts costs/items charged to
Inventory Management Accounting Accuracy - Parts
assets
Inventory Management Expedited Shipping Total Expedited Shipping Costs
Percent of inventory items with accurate
Inventory Management Inventory Accuracy
balances
Value of variances as a percent of total
Inventory Management Inventory Accuracy
inventory value
Inventory Management Inventory Currency Percentage of inventory items that are inactive
Inventory Management Inventory Efficiency Months of inventory on-hand
Inventory Management Inventory Order Fulfillment Percentage of requisitions filled on demand
Inventory Order Fulfillment
Inventory Management Mean number of days to fill a back-order
- Back-Orders
Number of part returns due to wrong part
Inventory Management Inventory Service
supplied
Value of inventory issued/total inventory on
Inventory Management Inventory Turnover
hand
Inventory Management Inventory Value Inventory value per vehicle
Inventory Management Inventory Workload Number inventory transactions per person
Inventory Management Out-of-Stock Items Total number of active items out of stock
Inventory Management Out-of-Stock Items Mean time out of stock
Number of stock-outs as a percentage of total
Inventory Management Stock-Outs
requisitions or per thousand reqs
Number of vehicles out of operation waiting for
Inventory Management Vehicles Down Due to Parts
parts
CMMS CMMS Efficiency Average time per transaction
CMMS data entry error rate (data quality
CMMS CMMS Integrity
control audits)
Percentage of time CMMS is unavailable due to
CMMS CMMS Reliability
technical problems

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Sources
1. Duffuaa, Salih O. and Haroun, Ahmed E. 2009. Maintenance control. InBen-
Daya, Mohamed, et al., Handbook of Maintenance Management and Engineering.
London: Springer-Verlag.
2. Marquez, Adolfo Crespo. The Maintenance Management Framework: Models
and Methods for Complex Systems Maintenance. London: Springer-Verlag,
2007.
3. Artley, Will, and Stroh, Suzanne. 2001. The Performance-Based Management
Handbook, Volume 2: Establishing an Integrated Performance Measurement
Program. Performance-Based Management Special Interest Group and the
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education.
4. Al-Hammad, Abdul-Mohsen. 2011. Architectural engineering course 524:
Facilities maintenance management lectures. King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals. http://faculty.kfupm.edu.sa/ARE/amhammad/ARE­
524-course-web/ARE-524-Syllabus.doc.
5. Barry, Don. 2011. Reliability by design: Reliability-Centered Maintenance. In
Campbell, John D., Jardine, Andrew K., and McFlynn, Joel. Asset Management
Excellence: Optimizing Equipment Life-Cycle Decisions. Boca Raton: Taylor and
Francis Group.
6. Kumar, Uday, and Parida, Aditya. 2008. Maintenance Performance
Measurement (MPM) System. In Kobbacy, K. A., and Murthy, D. N. Complex
System Maintenance Handbook. London: Springer-Verlag.
7. Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 2012. Rail Fleet
Services Monthly Report, March.
8. Barry, Don. 2011. Measurement in maintenance management. In Campbell,
John D., Jardine, Andrew K., and McFlynn, Joel. Asset Management Excellence:
Optimizing Equipment Life-Cycle Decisions. Boca Raton: Taylor and Francis
Group.
9. Venezia, Frank W. 2004. TCRP Synthesis 54: Maintenance Productivity Practices.
Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, 2004.
10. Raouf, Abdul. 2009. Maintenance quality and environmental performance

improvement: An integrate approach. In Ben-Daya, Mohamed, et al.,

Handbook of Maintenance Management and Engineering. London: Springer-

Verlag.

11. Centeno, Griselle. 2002. Repair time standards for transit vehicles. National
Center for Transit Research, University of South Florida, September 24.
12. King County Auditor's Office. 2009. Performance audit of transit,

Technical Report E: Vehicle maintenance. King County Auditor Reports:

Transportation, September 15. http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations/

auditor/Reports/Dept/DOT.aspx.

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13. Stanger, Richard. 2005. TCRP Synthesis 61: Maintenance Staffing Levels for
Light Rail Transit. Transit Cooperative Research Program. Washington, DC:
Transportation Research Board.
14. DiNapoli, Thomas. 2009. Metropolitan Transportation Authority–New
York City Transit/Staten Island Railway: Selected aspects of railcar fleet
maintenance. Office of the New York State Comptroller, Division of State
Government Accountability.
15. Mahboob, Qamar, et al. 2012. An approach to calculate overall efficiency of
rolling stock for an urban rail transit system. Journal of Public Transportation
15(1).
16. Desrosiers, Carl, and Anderson, Richard. 2010. Improving transit system
performance: The STM's experience. 2010 Transit CEOs Seminar, Stuart, FL:
American Public Transportation Association, January 30.
17. Paaswell, Robert E., Audenaerd, Laurence, and Jafari, Mohsen. 1997.
Application of industrial standards to bus maintenance procedures.
Transportation Research Record 1571.

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 Workforce Training
6

SECTION

and Organizational
Development
This section discusses challenges related to management of the railcar maintenance
workforce and strategies and opportunities for improving workforce skills and
performance. It discusses state of the practice around training, knowledge management,
and creating a maintenance culture focused on productivity and quality.

Employees must have the appropriate skills and knowledge to perform

maintenance tasks efficiently and accurately, ensure ongoing quality of
maintenance work, meet changing maintenance needs and support performance
improvement processes. Workforce training and development is critical for
successful maintenance management due to:

• The introduction of emerging technologies into organizations that require

new skills and staff training
• Workforce transitions and employee turnover putting agencies at risk of

losing institutional knowledge and competencies

• The recognition of the need for interpersonal, collaboration, and problem

solving skills at all levels to support a learning organization

Workforce training and development is central to Total Productive Maintenance’s

fourth pillar—Continuous Learning (addressed in Section 3, “Pillar #4” and expanded
on in this section)—and can improve maintenance operations by raising employee
satisfaction and reducing turnover rates, improving maintenance efficiency and
effectiveness, and reducing safety risk to personnel. The active participation of
the maintenance workforce, including its commitment to a customer- and quality-
focused vision, is a necessary foundation to fleet management improvement efforts
(1), (2), (3). This section covers key issues in workforce training and organization
development, including how to identify specific skill gaps and target training
resources, how to address skill gaps when implementing new fleet and maintenance
technologies, how to prevent the loss of institutional knowledge, and how to support
a positive work culture in maintenance.

Addressing Skill Gaps

Employee skills need to closely match the work planned to carry out the agency’s
railcar maintenance goals. In many cases, managers can use forward looking
assessments to identify and proactively address skill gaps before they impact

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maintenance operations, for instance, as part of procurement planning for a new

vehicle purchase. More often, managers must rely on performance data and
retrospective performance assessment to identify skill gaps in the maintenance
workforce that are impacting operational performance.

Training can address two types of skills: technical skills for fleet maintenance and
repair and general skills such as problem solving and teamwork to support the
technical skills. Improving these two types of skills can improve maintenance and
repair efficiency and reduce the time it takes to return a vehicle to service (4).
Figure 6-1 shows common processes for proactive and responsive identification
of training needs for both types of skills.

Figure 6-1
Identification of
Training Needs

This section outlines the approach to identify skill gaps and addressing them
through targeted, cost-effective trainings. It also discusses how to make the case
for additional funding for training.

Identifying a Skill Gap

Of the processes listed in Figure 6-1, three are general approaches that can
be used regularly at managers’ discretion to identify skill gaps of the fleet
maintenance workforce:

1. Skills audit
2. Training needs assessment
3. Analysis of maintenance management system reports/data

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These three options are discussed in more detail below.

Skills Audit
Regularly assessing the existing workforce skill set can help agencies determine where
skill deficiencies exist, how they evolve over time, and which types of trainings best
suit agency needs. A skills audit can be incorporated as part of employees’ annual
performance review, and the results of the skills audit can be used to create a training
profile that maps out employees’ current skill levels, where they should be or want
to be, and what trainings they need to take to attain an appropriate skill level or to
reach their career development goals. The training profile helps to facilitate targeted
training for those who need it the most and provides a constructive rather than
disciplinary framework to address skill deficiencies.

The most common form of a skills audit is a questionnaire that can be administered
by managers and supervisors, who can meet with their direct reports to fill it out
together (5). The skills audit establishes the employee’s job description, typical
duties and tasks performed, skills and knowledge required for each task, equipment
used for the position, any skills that are currently lacking, and previous training
history.29 The questionnaire results can also be supplemented with interviews,
written or skills tests, and workplace observation. The final skill requirements are
then compared against the actual skill sets of the workforce to understand the
gap areas. For example, as part of a skills audit, managers might conduct a test of
electronics shop workers’ proper use of bench test equipment for diagnostics.
The test would verify whether employees followed test procedures accurately,
knew how to use bench test equipment properly, and knew how to correctly
diagnose particular issues. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
conducted a skills audit to prepare for the delivery of the agency’s latest generation
of railcars, Silverliner V, to ensure the fleet maintenance workforce was prepared
to maintain a new generation of vehicles (6).

A skills audit is not only intended to measure the adequacy of employees’

technical skills but also to assess general skills, such as math and literacy aptitude.
Often, the underlying reason for poor performance of a maintenance task is not a
lack of mechanical aptitude, but actually weak mathematics or literacy skills or an
inadequate overall conceptual understanding of the task. A deficit of foundational
skills and knowledge can cause problems later as workers advance to carry out
more complicated and technical tasks (5).

Training Needs Assessment

A training needs assessment is another approach to understand and address a
perceived skill gap. It is more focused than a skills audit which would cover

The APTA Rail Vehicles Maintenance Training Standards, which were developed to address the shortage
29

of skills resulting from changing technologies and shifting workforce demographics, can be used as a guide
to possible topics to cover within a skills audit. For the full document, see http://www.aptastandards.com/
Portals/0/Rail/MaintTrain/vehicles.pdf.

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the railcar maintenance program generally. A training needs assessment might

be used to further investigate specific critical areas identified as problematic
in a skills audit. However, it is not so specific as target just a single technical
procedure. The training needs assessment represents a methodical process to
understand training needs and develop cost-effective training strategies. The
process consists of seven core steps carried out by an assessment team30 to
understand the problem and implement appropriate responsive training:

1. Clarify the need. Performance reports or management input may identify

a performance issue indicating a possible training need, but to verify the
need and formulate a training approach, it is necessary to target specific
performance issues. The assessment team should document the core
performance issue and validate their ideas with management and staff. Areas
to document would be the employees or positions involved, the processes
or procedures behind or related to the need, the impact of the issue and its
criticality, and the benefits of addressing the need.
2. Understand the performance gap. The next step is to understand the
performance requirements surrounding the core performance issue and the
extent to which employees are failing to fulfill these requirements. At this
step, it should be clear whether training is an appropriate strategy to address
the core issue, as well as what the appropriate level of effort is for the
training needs assessment.
3. Formulate questions and goals. It is important to carefully formulate the
questions the training needs assessment is seeking to answer and set specific
goals for the process. Common questions to answer include:
– Who should undergo the training?
– When should they undergo the training?
– What should be the scope of the training?
– How should the training be developed?
– What types of training might be appropriate?
– Who should carry it out?
– What are the expected outcomes of the training?
– How should training outcomes be measured?

4. Plan the analysis. In this step, the assessment team lays out how to meet the
assessment goals. The project plan should cover what analysis is appropriate,
what data are necessary to support the analysis, what stakeholders should
be included, and who the ultimate decision makers should be. Common data
collection approaches include observation, interviews, CMMS data analysis,
surveys, and supplemental self-reporting by key employees.

30
Note that an assessment team may be structured and managed the same as a quality improvement team;
see Section 3, “Quality Improvement Teams.”

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5. Implement the plan. The data collection and analysis should result in a
firm and detailed set of requirements for a proposed training program.
6. Review the outcomes. Once the assessment team has compiled the
project findings and recommendations, they should be circulated to
stakeholders and decision makers for review and comment.
7. Implement the training program. Once the proposed training
program is refined and approved, the resources identified for the program’s
development must begin implementation of the program. The assessment
team members typically continue to support the project (7).

Analysis of Maintenance Management Data

Another way for managers to identify training needs is through standard
computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) reports, such as
comebacks and issues flagged in quality assurance inspections of maintenance
jobs. Specific recurring mechanical issues or differences among individuals, teams,
and locations can all indicate a training issue. Special-purpose data collection,
such as employee surveys and time standard development,31 is another option for
characterizing training needs. Finally, senior mechanics, foremen, and supervisors
may also identify training needs through their observations on the shop floor.

Managers may also proactively identify training needs through various planning
processes. New vehicles and technologies, facilities and equipment, processes and
approaches, or organizational structures may all require some level of training
for successful implementation, which should be included in project planning. The
annual budgeting process and the development and update of vehicle lifecycle
management plans32 are also opportunities to identify needs for proactive
training. Finally, railcar maintenance programs can benefit from workforce
planning, including the identification of training needed to support standard
career development tracks (8).

Selecting the Appropriate Training and Approach

Training ensures workers have the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes
necessary to effectively carry out their maintenance responsibilities and, ideally,
address any identified skill gaps. Training may be responsive and address ongoing
or emerging performance issues or be proactive and prepare the workforce
for anticipated events such as the implementation of Reliability-Centered
Maintenance, a new railcar procurement, an upgrade to the CMMS, or the
retirement of key technical staff (5).

See Section 5, “Performance Targets/Benchmarking.”

31

Such as the agency’s fleet management plan or vehicle maintenance plan, discussed in Section 5, “Railcar
32

Maintenance’s Role in Lifecycle Management Planning.”

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Trainings typically focus on one of the two skill types: technical maintenance skills
or general skills—problem solving, communication, teamwork, etc. Different
types of training better address these two different types of skills. There are
three main types of in-house trainings that give mechanics the skills they need for
maintenance and repair:

1. Classroom
2. On-the-job
3. Apprenticeships

Each of these types of training is discussed in the following sections.

Classroom Training
Effective classroom training places an emphasis on participants’ conceptual
understanding—for instance by demonstrating the mechanics of how different
components work together—and incorporates application whenever possible.
The creation of an interactive environment where employees spend less of their
time sitting and listening and more time actively participating with the material
and with the instructor generally increases engagement and helps employees
retain more of what they learn. A classroom setting can be well-suited to
teaching general skills. For instance, it allows participants to break into small
groups for team-building and communication exercises. Classroom-based training
can also serve for management updates and discussions of agency-wide and
department-wide goals (5).

Considerations when conducting classroom training include:

• Having an instructor who is familiar with an agency’s maintenance work

will ensure that the instructor has the most current knowledge and is

administering a curriculum that is relevant to the specific demands of the

workplace.
• Incorporating discussions and rotating groups of students through learning
stations can help make the experience more interactive and help break up
the monotony of pure instruction delivery
• An effective training should be a reasonable length to avoid student

disengagement and have a small student to instructor ratio in order to

maximize interaction (5)

• As employees acquire new skills, it is important to ensure they have

opportunities to deploy these skills directly

While formal classroom training is often the default mode of training, it lacks the
hands-on application component on-the-job training offers that is necessary to
stimulate employees and facilitate the learning process; often times students learn

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better through doing rather than listening (5). If students are not able to practice
what they are learning, it may be more difficult for them to retain the information
and for the instructor to foster engagement (9).

Vehicle System Models for Training and Bench Testing

Bench (as well as portable) testing equipment is widely used in railcar
maintenance, especially by electronics technicians. Such tools can also be a
valuable training tool, especially if they are configured to provide users with
an understanding of the system’s overall functions, architecture, and logic. For
bus maintenance, the “bus-in-a-box” is a common tool for testing onboard
radio and automatic passenger counter equipment. The bus-in-a-box is usually
a converted tool bench which clearly shows the onboard system’s architecture,
including all connections between components. The bus-in-a-box allows rapid
testing of components to detect faults and checked repaired items, but it also
helps mechanics and technicians unfamiliar with complex electronic systems
to quickly learn about the system and supports their performance of basic
maintenance tasks. Where shops can develop such bench test models of
systems, they are a valuable tool for both training and maintenance (31).

On-the-Job Training
On-the-job training consists of training employees on the shop floor by observing
and working alongside other mechanics, learning through demonstration and
practice of procedural application. Instructors are typically high-level mechanics
or supervisors.

On-the-job training can happen formally or informally. Managers and

foremen can promote informal on-the-job training by encouraging workers
to form mentorship relationships. High skill workers are valuable resources
whose expertise should be leveraged for training. Peer-based training offers
opportunities not only for knowledge transfer, but also to develop collaboration
and leadership skills and to broaden key employees’ career development
options. For example, in some agencies junior employees rotate through
positions matched to senior tradesmen to acquire skills. At Southeastern
Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), experienced mechanics can apply
competitively for mentor positions and must meet objective requirements to
be accepted. Mentors in the program oversee formal classroom and on-the-job
training for junior mechanics (10).

On-the-job training can provide a more engaging learning experience than

classroom training because workers are actively practicing what they learn and
the learning responsibility is shifted away from the instructor and onto the
student. Students are not only introduced to tools and equipment, but also to the

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idiosyncrasies that may exist for each vehicle type (11), (12). On-the-job training
is best used for inexperienced employees who could benefit from being in the
work environment. However, on-the-job training alone may not be sufficient for
positions that require a high skill level. (11) High skill level positions may require
classroom training to introduce complex ideas and enhance understanding
of underlying concepts and background knowledge. On-the-job training also
may tend to follow current work demand, which may prevent students from
undergoing a comprehensive technical curriculum.

Computer-Based Training
Managers in railcar maintenance recognized the advantages of computer-
based training (alternately known as “e-learning”) early. New York City Transit
first adopted a computer-based training program for railcar maintenance
supervisors in the early 1980s because it could deliver self-paced, individualized
instruction on the supervisors’ schedule. The system also enabled tracking of
employees’ progress and performance over time. The course materials covered
both general skills such as background knowledge to enable interpretation
of technical documentation and technical information such as standard
operating procedures and standard inspection procedures and remain a
model of an effective computer-based training program (16). More recently,
New Jersey Transit has adopted e-learning in maintenance to compensate
for greater training needs due to an increased retirement rate. Managers
cite the usefulness of focused training to address specific challenges that can
be completed opportunistically. By administering self-study courses that are
broken down into small, usually computer-based modules, training is delivered
in manageable units which employees can more easily fit into their workday.
Participants emphasize their enthusiasm for engaging training materials and
including interactive elements such as simulations and quizzes that teach. The
agency cites the program in part for improvements in reliability (30).

Apprenticeship Programs
Apprenticeship programs are occupational training programs used to establish
an employee’s expertise in a field with a broad set of skills through a long-term
career development process. Apprenticeship programs typically focus around
meeting an industry or other widely accepted certification standard such as the
American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA’s) Rail Vehicles Maintenance
Training Standards, excerpted in Figure 6-2. They provide a combination of
classroom instruction and on-the-job learning, supported by various kinds of
testing and evaluation, and typically last from two to four years. Apprenticeship
programs usually rely on traditional sequential training, which stresses the
cumulative build-up of knowledge, with each level of instruction providing a
foundation for the subsequent more technical level. Newly hired mechanics do

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not always possess the required technical skills, so a common hiring practice in
agencies with well-established initial training programs is to hire mechanics based
on their aptitude rather than on skill alone and rely on an apprenticeship program
to train up the new employees (5). The APTA training standard excerpted in
Figure 6-2 emphasizes technical skills, both general and by vehicle system, that
railcar mechanics and technicians should master. However, the standard does
not address general skills that can be critical in establishing a high performance
maintenance organization.33

Figure 6-2
Excerpt from
APTA’s Rail Vehicles
Maintenance
Training Standards

Source: APTA, Vehicles Training Joint Steering Committee (13)

33
The standards are available at www.aptastandards.com/Portals/0/Rail/MaintTrain/vehicles.pdf.

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Apprenticeship Program at LA Metro

LA Metro has a certified mechanic training program that consists of

technical classroom instruction and on-the-job training in operating division
maintenance shops. The 18-month program, which is the result of a union
agreement between LA Metro and ATU Local 1277, is taught by an Equipment
Maintenance Instructor and the curriculum covers the diagnosis and repair of
bus mechanical problems. Candidates are chosen by union seniority from the
service attendants that apply for the program; the 2012 class had an applicant
pool of 132 service attendants, and only 13 were selected to participate.

The training program puts the selected service attendants on a career track
with an established track for career advancement. It also motivates other
service attendants since their work performance is a criterion for selection
for the program. As the technologies of newer fleets evolve, so do the skill
demands for maintenance employees. LA Metro has encouraged its new class
of mechanics to keep up with this skill demand by evolving their profession and
continuously striving to learn and invest in their skill development (29).

Given the length of apprenticeship programs, they can serve as a valuable

early career development path for employees, and managers can easily verify
an employee’s success by tracking the employee’s progress in the program.
Apprenticeships are usually only open to new employees or to employees
within the agency in assistant or lower grade mechanic or technician positions
(5), (12). An effective apprenticeship program goes beyond the usual structure
to combine with other trainings that can give employees the interpersonal,
collaboration, and problem solving skills necessary to support a high performing
organization.

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Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership

The Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership began as a local effort
between SEPTA and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 234, but has
since expanded into a statewide transit partnership program. Labor and
management work together to accomplish the shared goal of improving
workforce skills through collaboration in the collection and analysis of
skills and performance data. The partnership in Philadelphia is headed by
a policy steering committee, made up of four representatives from SEPTA’s
management and four from the union. The committee is responsible for setting
the policies of the training program and overseeing its function, including
the work of several subcommittees that act as working groups for specific
initiatives.

When the program began in 2002, a third party vendor was hired to work with
the partnership to conduct the job task analysis, skills assessment, gap analysis,
and develop the training curriculum. Having input from both SEPTA and TWU was
an effective way of assessing training needs from two perspectives: front-line
employees and operations management. This approach supported a dialogue
that resulted in a shared understanding of training needs. The training program
eventually supported the development of critical workforce capabilities with the
goal of completing more vehicle maintenance work in-house. Training programs
earned more credibility and interest since they were supported by both the union
and management, and involved employee input. A key factor to the success of
the partnership was having a neutral third party, the vendor, objectively assess
the facts and guide the workgroups through their differences to stay on task.
Using the data the vendor produced from the skills assessment, both sides were
then able to agree on a training approach. Through the first year, the Keystone
program trained 134 workers, exceeding the initial target of 107 workers. By the
end June 2003, the program had trained 785 workers, more than double their
initial target of 300 workers (34).

Providing Targeted Training for

Railcar Maintenance Leadership
As railcar maintenance programs adopt new maintenance approaches and
increasingly emphasize proactive maintenance and approaches like Total
Productive Maintenance, junior and mid-level managers’ roles rely more on
advanced managerial skills. Generally, managerial responsibilities fall into four
categories:

• Planning. Managers are responsible for planning the use of the maintenance
organization’s resources to reach their team, department, and overall
agency goals. To reach high performance levels in maintenance requires
more sophisticated and effective planning, relying on historical data and

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close communication with subordinates and other teams and department to

develop accurate workload forecasts and on the use of advanced planning tools,
such as scheduling functions of the CMMS. Effective planning requires strong
quantitative and organizational skills.
• Organizing. Managers are responsible for the organizing of human resources
to effectively accomplish their team’s workload. They must divide human
resources into functional teams that reflect lines of responsibility, grouping of
related functions, business processes, workload, and the skill sets of employees.
Managers must have extensive institutional knowledge and the ability to identify
improvement needs and opportunities related to both human resources and
business processes.
• Directing. Managers must ensure that employees’ work effectively

supports organizational goals. Managers are responsible for coordinating

their subordinates’ work with other teams and departments. Flexibility and

communications, facilitation, and problem solving skills are critical for the

directing function.

• Controlling. Managers are responsible for ensuring planned tasks are executed
effectively and that work completed effectively supports the organization’s
goals. Management control requires expertise in the use of the CMMS and ERP,
understanding of data collection and performance management, and knowledge
of other, more focused management control approaches (14).

APTA’s Proposed Core Competencies for New Transit Supervisors34 reflect

these four functions and identify specific skills to seek when selecting new
managers for railcar maintenance or to use for career development goals
for existing managers. APTA’s competencies focus on communications skills,
oversight of subordinates’ training and career development, interpersonal skills,
work planning and management, safety awareness, problem solving and conflict
management skills, adaptability, and decision-making (15). Soft skills, such as
communication and facilitation, help maintenance managers act as enablers for
employee initiative and problem solving (5).

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s

“DELI” Luncheon Series
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) initiated the DELI
(“Dialogue, Engage, Lead, and Innovate”) luncheon series in which mid-level
managers and executive staff meet to exchange ideas and discuss issues and
initiatives. The DELI series encourages communication between managers and
gives them information that they can share with their staff. It provides a value
forum for managers to learn from each other’s experiences (23).

See APTA’s website, http://www.apta.com/resources/profdev/webinars/supervisory/Pages/default.aspx.

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Management Development at Greater Cleveland

Regional Transit Authority
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) has a management
development program that is used train employees to develop their cross
business and cross functional expertise. The program runs for 20 to 22 months,
and each participant goes through four to five rotations that last six months
each. The selection process is targeted primarily towards recent college
graduates that demonstrate academic excellence and strong analytical and
critical thinking skills. Upon successful completion of the program, participants
are placed into positions that have high organizational impact and encourage
growth and succession. The program has been successful because it has
provided a pipeline by which the agency can develop future leaders; not only
does the program demonstrate a commitment to career advancement, but
it also encourages continuous training, development, and mentoring. The
program also has high visibility with senior leadership and enables participants
to build relationships across all levels of the organization. The agency was also
able to gain buy-in because of the recognition that the newer generation of
employees had their own ideas and skill sets to offer. Cultivating these skills and
ideas were seen as an important part of succession planning and investing in
the future of the organization.

Participants of the management development program started a Future

Leaders Club that provides the workforce with professional development
opportunities, career guidance, and networking opportunities. Professional
development seminars are held on a monthly basis; speakers include leaders
from within the organization as well as business leaders from Northeast
Ohio and Canada. Speakers cover a broad range of topics, from leadership to
professionalism, and share their practical knowledge and experiences within
their field (35).

Technical knowledge is also critical for managing railcar maintenance. Supervisors

need to be able to identify the resources necessary to complete a task and be
able to interpret manuals, diagrams, and other technical documentation and
communicate it to others. They must also be able to evaluate work and diagnose
problems (e.g., car equipment troubleshooting), and use these experiences to make
decisions on how best to manage technical resources (16).

Quantitative and planning skills are important to effectively manage the growing
complexity and technological sophistication of railcars and the higher number of
specialist and expert technical staff. These factors demand that managers have
more than the traditional mechanic and management skills to be able to effectively
lead and motivate the workforce. Maintenance managers must also be able to
support the shift towards becoming a high-performing work organization with

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the ability to implement more sophisticated maintenance approaches such as with

Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance practices.
Tracking performance requires supervisors to be highly engaged with their staff
on a regular basis in order for them to understand how personnel skill sets can
support overall organization goals and have the managerial skills to be able to plan
for the processes best suited to address department needs (17).

Finding Time and Funding for Training

Many agencies know that their workers need additional training to upgrade their
skills, but it can be challenging to allocate time and resources for training. Managers
are often reluctant to pull workers from their daily responsibilities to administer
training and may choose to use overtime instead. Allocating additional funding
for training from budgets that are already constrained can be challenging when
training is not seen as an investment in human capital, but rather an expense and a
fulfillment of regulatory compliance (5).

It is important to consider the potential benefits of any training offered to

employees. Trainings are most valuable when they provide a quick return on
investment. By carefully adhering to several basic principles, managers can ensure
the effectiveness and value of trainings:

• Trainings should reflect timely business needs.

• An effective training is pertinent and actionable for participants: an employee
should be able to put the material to immediate use.
• The training material should be at the appropriate level. The training should
cover mostly new material, but it must ensure the employee has appropriate
background or foundation knowledge to understand.
• The training should be engaging to maximize participants’ engagement and the
knowledge they take away (8).

While these are basic, non-controversial ideas, their implementation can require
significant work on the part of staff responsible for preparing trainings. In general,
short trainings are easier to schedule into the workday and take less time to prepare,
but even minor trainings should adhere to the criteria listed above. When deploying
trainings to address an existing performance issue, it is important to base that
decision on actual performance data to ensure training resources are being used to
address the most critical needs. Managers should select employees for participation
based on who is most likely to benefit from the training. Criteria for the inclusion of
an employee might be their area of specialty, a qualitative judgment of their level of
skill, or performance data from the CMMS, such as comebacks (18), (5).

Using Downtime for Training

Time for training should be prioritized by taking advantage of employees’
natural downtime (5). Downtime can sometimes occur as a result of an uneven

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maintenance workload. Downtime may also vary across shifts—there may be more
downtime during peak hours when vehicles are in service, whereas the time period
in which vehicles are not in service and maintenance is being performed will result
in less downtime. There may also be downtime during unexpected occurrences,
such as delayed parts preventing the completion of maintenance work. If managers
can prepare a training program to take advantage of these various opportunities,
it is possible to ensure the productive use of downtime and minimize the time
investment needed for training.

Flexible and concise trainings work well with a down-time approach, in contrast to
the more structured and lengthy nature of traditional training approaches. When
managers foresee downtime in advance, they can plan more extensive trainings.
When employees have sporadic availability, training strategies such as web-based
training or informal trainings with short durations, sometimes lasting no more
than 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, can be used. This can be as simple as
a supervisor discussing how to troubleshoot a specific maintenance problem
that the shop has recently faced. Such trainings may occur at the discretion of
the foreman or supervisor and topics should cover current or ongoing issues.
Often such training is peer-based, with a mechanic or technician preparing the
material and taking the lead role in training a small group. The participation of
frontline employees encourages individuals to develop specialties, such as the use
of specialized equipment, quality assurance, the use of the CMMS, or workplace
safety, and can constitute part of employees’ career development. The best
use of downtime for training is to supplement existing knowledge rather than
administering informal trainings in lieu of a comprehensive curriculum to establish
the base mechanical knowledge. A combination of flexibility and accountability both
in the training program and in employees’ roles allows individuals to take more
control over their learning experience and make the most of it.

Stretching Training Dollars

Allocating sufficient funding for training can be challenging but there are many
innovative approaches, such as forming a training consortium with other agencies,
creating a partnership with a local community college, or opening up training courses
to a wider audience to reduce an agency’s in-house costs. Sharing training course
material with other agencies can help agencies make the most of limited resources
(89). This is also beneficial to the transit industry as a whole; if training guidelines are
standardized and the best trainings from different agencies are pulled together, the
result is a valuable resource pool that represents agencies’ areas of strength.

When transit agencies support employees’ participation in external education and

trainings, it can be useful for managers and employees to map out training goals
both to encourage employees’ use of the benefit and to maximize value for both
parties. Such planning typically occurs on an annual basis. Another benefit of such
planning is that it affords a valuable opportunity for a manager to provide feedback to
the employee and emphasize areas where the employee needs development. It is also

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an opportunity for employees to communicate their career interests and long term
goals. Regular meetings focused on career development can help improve employees’
performance by providing feedback on their past performance, communicating
expectations for future performance, and supporting employees’ improvement
efforts. Such meetings also give employees an opportunity to present their own
expectations for their career and help employees understand how to achieve their
career goals. The meeting outcomes should be summarized by either the employee
or the manager, confirmed by the other, and placed on file for future reference (5).

In order to verify training’s cost-effectiveness, managers may pilot trainings with

a subset of target personnel. The initial investment in the training is reduced,
and managers can evaluate the success of the training by comparing participants’
performance before and after the training. They can also compare participants
post-training performance with non-participants. Based on the change in
performance, managers should be able to at least ascribe a rough value estimate to
the training. Keeping track of costs in conjunction with the benefits can help justify
the investment in training in the long run (5). Investment in training planning and
development is critical. Agencies need to determine which training strategies work
best for them, target resources towards those needs that are most pressing, and
emphasize high quality in every training.

After conducting training, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of the

training. It is the manager’s responsibility to ensure that each training has an
effective evaluation strategy in place to ensure the training meets its goals and
to implement improvements for future trainings (see call-out box). For long
standing trainings, such evaluations should be conducted regularly. When a training
program has explicit, measurable goals, it both helps participants to focus and
allows managers to subsequently effectively measure the effectiveness and value
of the training. Measuring the success of a training program can include feedback
from employees. A short evaluation form focusing on participants’ engagement is
effective for measuring the value of the training from the participants’ perspective.
However, employee evaluations are not a substitute for objective measurement of
the training’s success (18).

Southern California Region Transit Training

Consortium (SCRTTC)
The Southern California Region Transit Training Consortium (SCRTTC) is a
partnership between community colleges and transit agencies that work
together to develop resources that can be used to develop the transit industry’s
technical workforce. The SCRTTC is funded through a mixture of sources,
primarily grant funding and membership fees, however the organization also
benefits from the shared resources of its members.

The partnership builds training capacity for transit agencies and results in a unique
pool of shared knowledge from both experts from the community colleges and
transit agencies. The community college members and transit members both
have training topic inventories that are reviewed and updated on a regular basis.
The inventories are not only representative of courses that address current skill
needs, but also the larger transit industry training needs. These inventories are a
result of needs assessments conducted through interviews, surveys, meetings,
and site visits. The SCRTTC trainings are available to agencies that may not have
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Measuring the Effectiveness of Trainings

Managers should ensure they can effectively measure results. One approach
is to conduct a before and after comparison using data from the CMMS to
understand the change in comebacks, time to repair, or other key performance
metrics. Another assessment approach is to conduct an evaluation of skills
learned in the training. A written test may reflect some of the knowledge
acquired by the employee, but practical tests are preferable to provide an
accurate representation. Probably the best way to measure the effectiveness of
trainings (as well as other performance improvement measures) is to compare
the outcome of those undergoing the training to a control group who does
not undergo the training. The more focused the training or its components,
the easier it is to measure effectiveness. For instance, the effectiveness of a
training related to brake system repairs should be reflected in the subsequent
maintenance data. Managers can implement comparisons by select a particular
team, shift, or facility to undergo the training while maintaining a comparable
control group. When managers can measure the benefits of a given training, it
becomes much easier to justify the level of resources expended for the training.

External trainings can present more of a challenge for measuring the

effectiveness of performance. External trainings often have a broader
scope than internal trainings—for instance pursuit of an accreditation vs.
understanding a particular diagnostic procedure—which makes assessing their
value more difficult. However, when selecting external trainings or approving
an employee’s choice of external trainings, the manager still needs to consider
the intended outcome of the training in light of the questions that would apply
to an internal training: what need is the training addressing, how is the training
appropriate for the employee, and how is it possible to measure the outcomes
of the training? In the absence of objective measures, qualitative answers to
the questions can still provide valuable information. Moreover, it is necessary
to follow up to understand whether the training met expectations and to
note potential lessons or improvements for the future. The various levels of
performance measurement include the following:

• Training participation: track how many employees are participating in the

training over a given period of time
• Participant attitudes: measure the participants’ opinions on training and
its effectiveness
• Learning: assess what the participants actually learned through the
training, which usually involves before and after testing
• Application: evaluate the extent to which participants actually apply the
skills or knowledge acquired through the training, which can involve
ongoing observation
• Business impact: evaluate the extent to which training has addressed the
business issue it was intended to target
• Cost-effectiveness: model the cost-effectiveness of training to
understand its ultimate value to the organization
• Optimization: update training program based on observations of
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Preparing for the Requirements

of New Technologies
The introduction of new generations of vehicle technologies, maintenance
equipment, and information technology to a railcar maintenance program usually
requires mechanics and technicians to upgrade their skills in preparation by
becoming familiar with new equipment and learning new skills and maintenance
procedures. As railcars increase in complexity, maintenance workers are expected
to maintain vehicle systems that are both more advanced and more diverse (18).
If the transit agency does not address such training needs, the railcar maintenance
program is likely to see impacts on employee productivity, vehicle down time, and
vehicle reliability, with declining overall vehicle availability (5).

Training needs to be carefully planned well ahead of the delivery of new vehicles so that
mechanics and technicians have adequate time to prepare for the new assets. Giving
technical ownership of a new system to a core team of maintenance staff and providing
the members with intensive training establishes training leads for the remaining
workforce (a “train the trainer” approach). Training is a critical investment in the
success of new vehicles or systems, but agencies do not always budget sufficient training
resources as part of the upfront capital cost of a major procurement (5).

SEPTA’s Skill Gap Analysis in Preparation

for New Vehicle Delivery
As part of the procurement of the Silverliner V railcar, SEPTA conducted a skill
gap analysis covering both the existing fleet and the new fleet. The goal of the
assessment was to understand the workforce’s shortcomings so that they could
be addressed in the eighteen to twenty-four month window preceding delivery
of the new vehicles.

The assessment included first an analysis to understand the specific skills

needed to support SEPTA’s railcar maintenance business processes and job
tasks. More than 500 job tasks were broken out by criticality and mapped
to more than 30 positions. The skill requirements developed included
performance standards or benchmarks to provide a baseline target for the
organization to meet. Next the assessment evaluated the workforce to
understand the current level of skills. Finally, the evaluation compared the
existing skill levels against the skill requirements developed to understand the
current skill gap. Through the assessment process, SEPTA was able to identify
specific areas to focus training efforts, such as giving electricians a better
conceptual understanding of how programmable logic controller function and
improving mechanics’ basic computer skills. The resulting training program
included a mix of general trainings in foundational skills and targeted training
for higher level skills such as specialty diagnostics (6).

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Transit agencies can use test vehicles in the acceptance and safety certification period
to have the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) demonstrate maintenance
procedures and to give maintenance staff early familiarity with the vehicles ahead
of delivery. Also, an initial OEM support period allows hands-on training, which
the agency can document with video cameras and photographs to develop its own
tailored training materials. Support periods also give at least a subset of frontline
workers the opportunity for on-the-job training with specialists from the OEM.

The OEM’s technical documentation can be useful throughout the life of the
vehicle. The OEM typically is required to provide detailed technical documentation
to accompany maintenance manuals, including high quality system diagrams and
figures. Over the course of the vehicle’s useful life, maintenance staff can update
and adapt technical documentation to better document maintenance procedures
for training and resource purposes.

Preventing Maintenance
Knowledge Loss
Even within large maintenance organizations, many individuals may possess critical
expertise and institutional knowledge not available elsewhere in the maintenance
program. More generally, the skills and knowledge that come with a long career as
a mechanic, technician, or engineer working on a particular system are not easily or
quickly transferred and require careful succession planning and investment to avoid
their loss. It is important that the maintenance program have a knowledge transfer
strategy in place to ensure critical knowledge and skills are not lost through
retirement or other kinds of turnover (20).

One of the key strategies for knowledge preservation is practical documentation

of maintenance knowledge. Documentation requires an ongoing effort to record
practices, requirements, specifications, plans, and other critical documents
in useful, indexed formats. Maintaining documentation requires an ongoing
commitment, but the more practical the information is, the more benefits the
maintenance program will reap, especially in supporting training of employees new
to positions. For instance, as part of its Strategic Maintenance Program, one heavy
rail operator’s vehicle maintenance managers made improvement of maintenance
procedure documentation a priority. Senior mechanics, foremen, quality assurance
staff, and supervisors were given greater control of and responsibility for keeping
documentation up-to-date and improving its practicality. The fleet managers
emphasized the use of diagrams, photos, and practical tips. The agency also
emphasized adding explanations of the purpose and concept behind tasks and steps
so that maintenance staff could better understand tasks conceptually.

Another strategy to provide redundancy for critical workers and improve

career path opportunities for experienced mechanics and technicians is to
create a program for part-time shift coverage for critical positions. Under such

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cross-training, the employees undergoing cross-training takes time off of their

normal role, typically covering less critical shifts, and receives mentoring from
the position’s incumbent. Training up of such workers is a good opportunity to
assemble and update documentation into practical, indexed formats. Moreover,
the extra coverage frees up the incumbent employee’s time for such training and
documentation activities. “Understudy” workers also benefit from the opportunity
to develop new skills, specialize, and take on additional responsibility (21), (5).

Succession planning is a systematic approach to help organizations prevent the

loss of critical knowledge and capabilities when employees resign or retire.
Succession planning identifies key areas of risk for knowledge and skills loss as
well as prevention strategies. It is good practice to review employees on an annual
basis, particularly all specialists and managers, to understand which employees are
likely to retire, which possess critical knowledge and capabilities unique within
the organization, and which possess knowledge and skills that would be difficult
or impossible to get through a new hire (22). Railcar maintenance managers can
conduct a simple risk analysis where each employee is scored on these factors
to create a weighted average score. Managers can then develop risk mitigation
strategies to the most critical employees (20). For example, one strategy is to
identify internal candidates to fill these positions and create a career development
plan to prepare them by the expected succession date. Development plans should
map out specific training needs and milestones that are necessary to gain a level
of proficiency to take over for key employees (3). Annual succession planning
should chart year-on-year progress and identify where development plan and other
existing strategies are falling short of goals.

Other strategies to address succession risks include:

• Identify key competencies and knowledge candidates must possess to fill

critical positions.
• Maintain and regularly update career development plans for all staff, focusing
on coverage of critical positions.
• Develop and improve the documentation of practical knowledge needed for
the position.
• Minimize incentives for critical retirement-eligible employees to leave

organization (23).

Supporting a Positive
Maintenance Culture
The vision for a productive maintenance culture centers on careful attention
to work quality and the needs of the end customer, the active identification
of opportunities for improvement, and rapid response to emerging issues.
Railcar maintenance managers can support improvement of their department’s

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maintenance culture in part through a focus on employee engagement, recognition,

and performance incentives. The vision is to have employees take ownership
not only of their own work but that of the maintenance department and transit
agency as whole, building a sense of shared responsibility for the agency’s service
quality. When workers are not invested in the organization’s vision, they have
less motivation to carry it out. A work culture that appreciates and recognizes
its employees’ contributions, respects their autonomy and input, and provides
visible opportunity for career development and advancement can contribute to
improved employee morale and increased productivity and performance. Note
that supporting a positive work culture is also a critical success factor for Total
Productive Maintenance (TPM) (see Section 3), which relies on the engagement and
leadership of frontline employees to realize continuous improvement.

Recognition and Incentive Programs

Within the transit industry, recognition and performance incentives are widespread
strategies to motivate the maintenance workforce and reinforce the maintenance
culture. Recognition looks retroactively at employees’ performance while
performance incentives create a broad-based, transparent framework for rewarding
future success. The goal of recognition programs is to reinforce positive behaviors,
clearly express appreciation for good work, and align employee incentives with
those of managers (24). Recognition programs can help build role models for
maintenance employees at all levels and stages of their careers and thereby
reinforce the organization’s values. As part of a recognition program, a maintenance
program may also confer certificates or titles that reflect a maintenance employee’s
skill and role progression and provide a sense of career advancement without
formal promotion. Both recognition and incentive programs must closely reflect
the organization’s overall values and be based a transparent award process (25).

Like recognition programs, incentive programs are intended to communicate clear

priorities and performance targets to employees and to focus the maintenance
organization. They tend to be more broad-based, rewarding all employees who meet
a certain performance threshold. Some agencies use employee incentive plans to
reward maintenance productivity, quality, and innovation and to reward employees
for meeting goals related to operating performance, safety, and attendance (26).
Incentives can range from monetary rewards to extra vacation days.35 Another major
incentive for employees is career advancement; establishing a transparent career
path will give employees goals to aspire towards. Employees are often rewarded
collectively at the team, functional, or division level. Common employee incentive
programs for transit vehicle maintenance programs include the following:

• Merit pay. Salary increases and promotion are based on employee

performance reviews and performance targets set in advance.

35
Though collective.

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• Individual performance bonus. A bonus program is similar to merit pay

but consists only of a one-time reward for work performance.
• Non-cash incentives. Similar to a bonus program, except employees only
receive non-cash prizes and special perquisites for work performance.
• Suggestion plan. Individual employees, functional teams, or quality

improvement teams are rewarded for suggesting successful cost-saving or

performance improvement ideas.

• Labor cost savings program. Employees participate in a process to drive

labor productivity and work quality and share collectively in the overall
savings or benefit generated through a bonus or other sharing program.

Typical performance measures for incentive programs include productivity

measures such as total preventive maintenance inspections completed in the last
period, quality measures such as number of comebacks for an individual employee
or functional team, or financial measures such as staying within a program’s budget
or minimizing use of overtime (27).

Promoting Employee Engagement

When employees are engaged with their work and the agency goals and objectives,
they have an incentive to invest in their own skill development and support
continuous improvement efforts. Employee empowerment is defined by the
sense of control employees feel over their work and decisions. Empowerment of
employees comes from giving them greater autonomy in their work and decision-
making, but also from raising their level of accountability to ensure they feel
responsible for outcomes. Clearly established standards, goals, and objectives help
to motivate workers. As goals set by management flow downward through the
organization, feedback from the frontline workforce flows upward (5), (2).

Giving frontline workers regular opportunities for input ensures that their concerns
receive attention from management and that distracting issues do not provide
an excuse for lack of progress. During major changes and transitions, meaningful
input to and involvement in decision-making processes helps ensure greater
support for the final direction and less resistance to change. When employees
are involved in the development of solutions, they not only provide high quality
practical information, but they are also more vested in ensuring the selection and
implementation of successful solutions. Employee participation may include direct
participation, consultative participation, informal participation, representative
participation, or full ownership of the process. Each of these can, to varying
degrees, increase employees’ cooperation and effectiveness in supporting TPM
and other initiatives, as well as their satisfaction with the process. For example,
self-directed work teams consistently show lower absenteeism and turnover
rates. They also free up management resources for higher value-added tasks
such as quality assessment, maintenance planning, and continuous improvement.
Other performance improvement approaches like quality circles and autonomous

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maintenance (see Section 3) also promote a positive maintenance culture by

reinforcing the responsibility and autonomy of frontline workers to provide input,
make decisions, and ensure outcomes. To support these approaches, frontline
workers need to build on critical skills including problem solving skills, business
skills such as QA/QC and cost accounting and modeling, team building skills, and
group decision making (28).

The vision for TPM is to maintain a department culture where all employees are
proactively pursuing improved quality and efficiency. By giving employees more
autonomy and a greater role in performance improvement, responding to their
input, and investing in their work environment, TPM helps nurture a greater sense
of ownership and engagement among maintenance workers.

Key Success Factors

Ø Managers regularly assess the existing workforce’s skill sets to
determine where skill gaps exist and which trainings best address
agency needs.
Ø Managers proactively identify training needs as part of the
department’s planning processes.
Ø The department’s training programs ensure workers have the
knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes to carry out their railcar
maintenance responsibilities.
Ø The department’s training programs support individualized career
development for employees.
Ø The delivery method for each training (classroom, on-the-job, etc.) is
appropriate to its goals and content.
Ø There is ongoing measurement of trainings’ effectiveness.
Ø The department has clear career paths in place for its frontline and
mid-level employees.
Ø Managers emphasize the use of opportunistic trainings to take
advantage of employee down-time.
Ø The department offers ongoing training to develop the leadership and
management skills of management staff at all levels.
Ø The department uses recognition and performance incentive programs
to motivate employees to improve performance meet department
goals.
Ø Succession planning, cross training, and related measures are place for
critical positions to avoid skills/knowledge loss.

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5. Finegold, David, et al. 1996. Closing the knowledge gap for transit

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9. Crosby, J. P. 1988. Training and skills requirements for British rail depot
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11. Howard, Jon J. 1997. A Study of the training methods used by the Vehicle
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13. American Public Transportation Association, Vehicles Training Joint Steering

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18. Schiavone, John J., and Wang, Xinge. 2011. Method and Processes for Transit
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26. Venezia, Frank W. 2004. TCRP Synthesis 54: Maintenance Productivity Practices.
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action. Southern California Regional Transit Training Consortium, March 4.

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 Supporting Processes
7

SECTION

and Systems
This section focuses on the supporting processes and systems on which a railcar
maintenance department relies to effectively carry out its mission. Chief among these are
the procurement, maintenance facility improvement projects, materials management,
and information technology functions, which may be hosted in other departments but
are integral to the railcar maintenance program’s work. This section explores the role of
each of these functions in railcar maintenance and presents management strategies and
methods to ensure their effectiveness and support their improvement.

Every railcar maintenance program relies on several critical supporting business

processes and systems to effectively carry out its mission. These include the following:

• Rail vehicle design/procurement – more than any other stage of the railcar
lifecycle, the decisions made during the design/procurement stage determine
the expected useful life, lifecycle costs, and performance of railcars.
• Railcar maintenance facility projects – new facilities or major upgrades
to existing maintenance facilities offer an opportunity to improve vehicle
maintainability, implement new maintenance capabilities to complete more
work onsite, and raise overall facility capacity and efficiency.
• Purchasing and materials management – the overall goal of purchasing
and materials management is to ensure the railcar maintenance mechanics and
technicians have the right parts, of sufficient quality and in the right quantity, at
the right place and time for an acceptable price.
• Information technology (IT) support – information systems can support
all aspects of maintenance management processes; asset data needs to be
stored, managed, and analyzed in one or more information systems for
effective management.

These supporting business processes are often managed or “owned” by other

departments. However, they are integral to the railcar maintenance department’s
work, and the department needs to closely oversee and cooperate with these
critical maintenance functions. This section explores the role of each of these
support functions in railcar maintenance and presents management concepts and
strategies to ensure their effectiveness and support their improvement.

Vehicle Procurements
More than any other stage of the railcar lifecycle, the decisions made during
procurement determine a vehicle’s maintenance requirements and more generally

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its expected useful life, lifecycle costs, and operational performance. The initial
design is the principal determinant of a vehicle’s maintainability, and the quality of
manufacture is a major determinant of a vehicle’s reliability. To ensure effective
management across the vehicle lifecycle, railcar maintenance managers are key
stakeholders in railcar lifecycle management, and railcar maintenance staff needs to
be included in all stages of a new vehicle procurement, major overhaul programs,
and any fleet modernization programs.

This section explores procurement strategies that help ensure the reliability and
maintainability of new vehicles through their entire lifecycle and addresses the role
that railcar maintenance staff can play in the procurement process. These strategies
include the following:

• Establishing effective program oversight to ensure vehicle quality

• Applying standards and common platforms to avoid problems with vehicle

systems integration and other quality issues

• Using best-value procurements and evaluating alternative procurement

options as ways to ensure successful railcar procurements from a lifecycle cost
perspective

It is important to note that many of these same principles apply to the

procurement of new rolling stock maintenance facilities and to the renovation or
replacement of existing facilities, which contribute to fleet maintainability and can
place constraints on railcar maintenance activities.

Program Oversight
For a new vehicle procurement, transit agencies typically establish a program
management team responsible for overall planning of the procurement,
development of requirements, oversight of the bid process, and oversight of
the design and manufacturing stages. Through deep expertise, thorough quality
assurance, and detailed planning, the program management team’s goal is the
delivery of a high quality vehicle with minimal lifecycle costs and maximum
performance. Therefore, the program management team’s scope of responsibilities
naturally includes a significant role for participants from the railcar maintenance
department. In many agencies, the vehicle maintenance department includes an
engineering group that oversees vehicle procurements.

The program management team must have expertise covering engineering,

procurement, program management, maintenance, lifecycle cost assessment,
regulatory requirements, contracting, and risk management. Representatives
from the railcar maintenance program typically play an important role in the
development of technical specifications and in the review of bids and vehicle
design, for example helping to address reliability and maintainability in the technical
specifications and ensure that vehicle designs reflect the capabilities of the

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maintenance facilities. It is important to represent the full breadth of stakeholders

in the railcar maintenance program, especially in larger agencies where
responsibilities are more broadly distributed, so that the procurement process
accurately reflects the department’s business requirements (1), (2).

Maryland MTA LRV Procurement

Program Management
When the Maryland Mass Transit Administration procured Baltimore’s first
light rail vehicles, it faced a tight timeline to ensure delivery and certification
of the vehicles in time for the opening of the new light rail line in 1992. The
establishment of an experienced program management team played a critical
role in planning and overseeing the procurement and ensuring its final success.
The program management team used a best-value procurement approach,
focused on identifying and managing risks and minimizing lifecycle vehicle costs.

In Maryland MTA’s first stage of procurement planning, the agency conducted

a peer analysis of light rail vehicle technologies used across North America.
The analysis took into account the vehicle design generation for the recent
peer procurements and compiled a list of key issues to specially address in
the procurement and to support comparison among technologies and against
the technical requirements imposed by the new system right-of-way. Such
issues included the brake system configuration, overpass clearance heights,
propulsion control (AC vs. DC), system integration, and articulated versus
non-articulated vehicles. As a result, in the course of evaluating proposals, the
procurement team was prepared to conduct an analysis of each bidder’s ability
to successfully integrate critical systems, especially the braking and propulsion
systems proposed.

In the development of the technical specifications, the procurement team

focused on minimizing risk and maximizing performance in key areas, such
as the propulsion system. The program management team conducted an
analysis comparing lifecycle costs of AC and DC propulsion systems, ultimately
opting for the former based on its superior record of reliability and better
maintainability and the vendor’s proven experience with the technology which
were reflected in lower overall lifecycle costs despite higher upfront costs.

Throughout the manufacturing stage, the program management team kept

a resident inspector onsite at the manufacturing facility and dispatched staff
for regular visits to support key quality assurance tests and review results.
Ongoing testing minimized the influence of final acceptance testing on the
project’s critical path and thus minimized the risk of delay in that critical stage.
The program management team prioritized retrofits and corrective measures
for issues identified in testing and provisionally accepted enough vehicles
to provide revenue service in time to carry passenger to the opening day of
Baltimore’s new ballpark. Remaining lower priority retrofits were conducted for
these vehicles on an ongoing basis.

The overall outcome of the procurement process was to balance an aggressive

schedule with a program that emphasized risk management, quality, and
management of lifecycle costs. As a result, the agency was able to procure
high quality vehicles with a track record of good reliability and maintainability
and also to meet the project schedule. The agency built upon this approach
successfully with its follow on procurement three years later, working to further
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The vehicle procurement program management staff is responsible for the creation
of a detailed and thorough acquisition plan and oversight of its execution. The
acquisition plan provides a roadmap for the procurement process, laying out each
of the steps and deliverables. Railcar maintenance representatives are responsible
for ensuring that the overall process meets the department’s primary business
objectives: maximizing vehicle reliability and maintainability. As a result, it is important
to emphasize their participation at all stages of the procurement. Later elements in
the acquisition plan may depend on earlier steps, such as the selection of a particular
technology or platform or on the results of an analysis of different procurement
approaches. For example, a decision to switch from DC to AC propulsion technology
could have major downstream implications, affecting the railcar maintenance
department’s training needs and its collaboration with the right-of-way maintenance
department overseeing power distribution (3).

The final responsibility of the program management team is to plan and implement
a successful transition of the new fleet into operations. Maintenance workers must
be receive training in advance to understand unfamiliar characteristics of the new
fleet and learn new maintenance procedures, including the use of new bench test and
other diagnostics equipment. Effective transition planning can reduce help costs and
sustain reliability during the new vehicles’ burn in period.

Vehicle Specification Standardization and Maintainability

Over-design can be an issue for U.S. light rail vehicle procurements. “Over-design”
refers to specifications that are so prescriptive that they drive up costs and reduce
competition from vendors. (1) Simplification of requirements and adherence to
standards can help bring costs down, reduce risks, and give bidders more leeway to
develop the best-value approach. To the extent that bidders can offer off-the-shelf
designs which would reduce costs and offer similar performance, it is consistent
with a best-value procurement approach and can mitigate risks related to factors
such as systems integration and maintainability. When the program management
team conducts early meetings with potential bidders, it can help the team develop
a technical specification that maximizes access to off-the-shelf designs and allows
latitude to manufacturers in key areas (4), (2), (5).

Unique vehicle designs minimize the opportunity for collaboration and coordination
with other agencies to reduce costs (1). Buying existing railcar models helps reduce
risk by selecting a proven vehicle with a broader market. Manufacturers and peers
are more likely to provide support over the long term. Spare parts are likely to be
less costly and less prone to have production discontinued unexpectedly (6), (5).
When the program management team diverges from a technical standard or a proven
platform, it is important to have a strong business case and conduct a full risk analysis,
as Maryland MTA did when it selected an AC power propulsion system for a new
light rail line. The use of standards and proven technologies is an important factor
in vehicle maintainability, and the railcar maintenance department is usually well-
positioned to help assess the risks of diverging from their use.

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The U.S. Government Accountability Office has encouraged the further development
and use of standards for passenger railcars in the U.S (6). High quality standards can
help reduce agency’s reliance on manufacturers using proprietary technology and
support more robust supplier networks, bringing down both initial vehicle purchase
costs and ongoing parts costs. The American Public Transportation Association’s
Procurement Terms and Conditions Working Group completed a standard request
for proposals and technical specifications template for light rail vehicle procurements
in 2011, the Light Rail Vehicle Request for Proposals (RFP) Procurement Guideline
(see except in Figure 7-1). The template asks the respondent to define their approach
to quality assurance and maintainability in the design and manufacturing processes.
The specification guideline includes a comprehensive testing program and reliability
demonstration process. It also includes maintainability standards for key vehicle
systems (7). The standard form helps ensure that the procurement is based on a
contract document that experienced manufacturers have worked with before.
Figure 7-1
Excerpt from APTA’s Light Rail Vehicle RFP Procurement Guideline

Source: APTA (7)36

Available online at www.aptastandards.com/StandardsPrograms/ProcurementStandardsProgram/

36

LightRailProcurementTechSpec/tabid/319/language/en-US/Default.aspx.

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IEEE Railcar Standards

The Transportation Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) sponsored a
research project to develop interface standards for electric rail passenger
vehicles. TCRP worked through the Institute of Electrical Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to form the
Rail Transit Vehicle Interface Standards Committee (RTVISC) and identify key
standardization areas for system and subsystem interfaces for light rail, heavy
rail, and commuter vehicles. Areas of standardization include: communications
protocols on trains, communications-based train control, health-monitoring
systems, safety standards for software systems, VOBC/propulsion controller/
motor/brake, auxiliary power systems, vehicle passenger information
standards, and environmental standards for rail transit equipment. Working
groups consisting of more than 300 participants were formed for each area;
each group is responsible for drafting proposed standards in their area.
Participants include individuals from transit agencies, suppliers, consulting
firms, and government and other interested organizations. At least 75 percent
of the committee must affirm a standard in order for it to be published.

Standardization for vehicle and system design and operations is beneficial in

establishing a base level of quality to help agencies increase reliability and
cost-effectiveness. The procurement of vehicles has long been a high cost for
agencies, and costs only continue to rise with the increasing incorporation of
advanced technologies in vehicles. However, the supply industry is able to use
the IEEE standards to ensure that they are building to common specifications,
thereby increasing availability of parts to transit agencies and reducing prices.
Standards counter the tendency of new technologies and customized designs
to reduce system compatibility and limit suppliers. Standardization also helps
to promote product quality by providing a precise basis for performance
specifications and also serves to improve interfaces between systems built
by different manufacturers by supplying a common architecture. The training
process is also made easier through minimization of the differences in
troubleshooting techniques and maintenance tasks across various suppliers.
It is estimated that the IEEE standards have the potential to save the transit
industry up to a third of a billion dollars annually (35), (30).

Best-Value Procurement
The purpose of a best-value procurement approach is to enable the owner to address
lifecycle costs and mitigate vendor-related procurement risks, while meeting key
performance standards for the assets being purchased. The program management
team is responsible for defining key performance standards in the technical
specification and for evaluating bidders with respect to cost, value, and risk. The best-
value procurement approach accomplishes this first by designing for reliability and
maintainability and focusing on manufacturing quality to help control lifecycle costs.

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Miami-Dade Transit and Lifecycle Cost Analysis

Miami-Dade Transit (MDT) procured its first heavy rail vehicles in 1984 and
planned to conduct a major overhaul beginning in 2004. Based on the bids
received, MDT decided to conduct a lifecycle cost analysis to compare the cost of
rehabilitation vs. purchase of new vehicles. The lifecycle cost analysis uses a net
present value to compare the long-term costs, both capital and operations and
maintenance. The lifecycle cost analysis showed MDT could save up to $140M
over the 30 year forecasting period by opting to purchase new vehicles under a
best-value procurement rather than rehabbing the existing fleet.

Such an analysis helps validate basic assumptions of the procurement and

evaluate procurement options. Lifecycle cost analysis can provide a useful
order of magnitude cost comparison of relevant procurement alternatives,
which could include rehabilitation of the existing fleet, a low bid procurement,
a best-value procurement, or an alternative procurement model such as a
service contract where the manufacturer, in partnership with an investment
company, supplies the vehicles for service under a lease and is responsible for
their lifecycle management. Such an exercise helps an agency in its long term
planning, reduces procurement risks, and helps ensure the delivery of a more
reliable, higher quality fleet (34).

Lifecycle cost analysis, introduced in the call-out box above, is one of the most common
methods to compare different bidders. A best-value procurement also relies on risk
analysis to validate, to the extent possible, bidders’ ability to successfully carry out
the project. The railcar maintenance department staff’s expertise can help validate
the assumptions behind a best-value procurement and ensure the evaluation process
reflects the agency’s maintenance and performance priorities and requirements.

Costs and the so-called RAMS factors—reliability, availability, maintainability, and

safety—are usually the key determinants of “value” with respect to maintenance.
Maintainability, in particular, is a critical factor for determining “best value” and is
largely a function of decisions made during the design phase. The complexity of a
maintenance task is determined by design factors such as:

• The location and accessibility of the system

• Safety factors related to the maintenance procedure
• The diagnostics procedures
• The incorporation of testing capabilities to the system
• The resources required for maintenance including labor and expertise,
facilities, and tools and equipment.
For each vehicle system, designers should use maintainability guidelines, developed in
collaboration with maintenance staff, which acknowledge and address the resources
and constraints existing or expected in the maintenance program. For example, a

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manufacturer should take into account the layout and capabilities of the existing
facility (8). For the United Kingdom’s Class 395 high speed train procurement,
the manufacturer made maintainability a cornerstone of the design from the
earliest project phases and developed maintainability standards for the design
team based on visits to multiple high-speed train maintenance facilities serving
other high speed rail systems. Since the vehicle procurement was for a new high
speed rail line under construction, the train manufacturer was also able to play a
role in the design of the vehicle maintenance facilities and provide valuable input
to further improve maintainability (9). In some cases, it is possible to address
design issues contributing to poor maintainability after vehicles enter service,
for example, as part of a rehabilitation program. However, such re-engineering
usually is only cost-effective for select cases, and it is best to identify and address
such issues in the design phase (8).

Experienced maintenance technical staff members are well positioned to play an

evaluation role in a best-value procurement. For instance, they can help identify
specific areas of risk where they want to see more detailed information from the
vendor. They can help with bid reviews, verifying bidders’ assertion related to
maintainability and lifecycle costs.

High quality diagnostics also contribute significantly to maintainability. As part of

the technical specification and procurement process, the transit agency should
assess the desired diagnostic capabilities to support maintenance and request
these as part of the technical specification, prioritizing them if possible in the
evaluation criteria to improve the quality of bids. Usually, much of the necessary
test equipment for vehicle inspections and diagnostics is supplied by the vehicle or
system manufacturer. As part of the specification, the transit agency should request
that the vehicle manufacture specify necessary system tests for performance
monitoring and diagnostics together with the required test equipment (10).

Improving Maintainability
through Design Simplification
East Japan Railway Company runs one of the largest passenger railcar fleets in
the world. The redesign of the company’s standard electric commuter railcar
was completed in 1998 and demonstrated the effectiveness of a design and
procurement approach focused on minimizing the railcars’ lifecycle management
costs and improved their maintainability. The engineering approach emphasized
simplification of the railcars—reducing components while maintaining or
improving functionality—to improve reliability, maintainability, and initial
manufacturing costs. For instance, the new Series E231 vehicles reduced wiring
between cars by 80 percent and within cars by 35 percent. The design team
also worked to include significantly more control capabilities in the new model’s
onboard computer to improve diagnostics and fault recovery for nearly every
major vehicle system. In contrast to prior procurements, the railway maintained
some of the manufacturing process in-house, using its production facility to test
a variety of quality improvement strategies, such as increased manufacturing
automation to reduce faults and labor costs, and to support more effective and
lower-cost reconditioning of vehicles (29).
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LA Metro: Best-Value vs. Low-Bid Procurement

LA Metro’s P2550 program, which consisted of the procurement of 50
light rail vehicles (LRV), encountered a number of design, quality, and
workmanship issues that led to schedule delays in delivery. Metro had used
a low bid process for vendor selection in vehicle procurement, which usually
yields competitive prices, but does not fully take into consideration the risk of
a selecting a bidder who cannot deliver specified vehicles under the contract
terms, for reasons of cost, experience, technology, or other. A low bid process
resulted in increased risk to the agency and higher overall lifecycle costs
due to lower vehicle design and manufacturing quality resulting in higher
operation and maintenance costs. The inherent risk of the low bid approach
was compounded by an insufficient quality assurance program relying too
much on the manufacturer’s self-policing, which resulted in assembly work
on vehicles resuming even when inspection findings were not fully addressed.
Although the manufacturer was supposed to submit quarterly updates
on estimated vehicle weight, only two or three reports were submitted,
resulting in vehicles that were 5,000 pounds overweight upon delivery of the
prototype vehicles. The identification of such major problems as overweight
vehicles and system interface issues in the later stages of the procurement
contributed to a significantly slower delivery schedule, and Metro eventually
successfully sought damages through the court system. It is important for
railcar maintenance managers to be aware of such risks and actively advocate
in the procurement process to ensure they receive a quality vehicle which
meets expectations.

LA Metro has taken the lessons learned from the P2550 program and applied
them to their next procurement of P3010 series light rail vehicles. Rather than
focusing on the lowest price, Metro took a best value approach in awarding
the contract, assessing factors including technical compliance, schedule risk,
and vendor program management in addition to cost. Consideration for
these factors was crucial to reduce both project delivery risk and ensure a
high quality product. In order to enforce quality requirements and ensure
that technical specifications are being followed, the agency now uses a more
extensive program management oversight process, including measures such
as check points for inspection in the production process. Furthermore, the
agency has employed performance-based contracting measures to better
manage procurement risk. For example, the manufacturer is only allowed to
proceed if it meets the agency’s minimum quality requirements; milestone
payments are tied to these requirements in order to keep the contractor
accountable for quality control. The contractor must also present a master
schedule, status reports, and mitigation plans for recovery of potential delays
to keep the project on track for completion within the timeline initially set
forth (33), (32).

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Key Success Factors

Ø The agency uses best-value procurements for new railcar purchases.
Ø The agency has established effective program oversight guidelines for
major fleet-related procurements, including new vehicle purchases and
major rehabilitation programs.
Ø The agency uses lifecycle cost analysis to support decision-making
related to the procurement model, critical design features, and bid
selection.
Ø The department provides requirements and design review for new
railcar procurements to maximize reliability and maintainability of new
vehicles.
Ø The agency emphasizes the use of technical standards and other
quality standards in major fleet procurements.

Railcar Maintenance
Facility Projects
Railcar maintenance facilities typically have useful lives of over fifty years and
must accommodate evolving fleets and maintenance needs. Agencies must plan
new facilities wit consideration of facility requirements beyond the current fleet.
Periodic facility improvements are needed to upgrade facility capabilities and
capacity. Given the impact of maintenance facility capabilities and capacity on fleet
maintenance operations, the railcar maintenance department must play a role in
maintenance facility planning.

For major facility procurements, an agency can benefit from the engagement and
oversight of the railcar maintenance department and from a program management
approach similar to that covered in Section 0. Furthermore, a best-value
procurement approach emphasizes the involvement of railcar maintenance staff
to clearly define maintenance requirements and review plans and specifications.
Major upgrades to maintenance facilities provide an opportunity to improve vehicle
maintainability, expand on-site maintenance capabilities, and raise overall facility
capacity and efficiency.

Maintainability is often a function of the constraints the maintenance facility

imposes. For example, one hybrid locomotive manufacturer’s battery design
relied on a forklift, which, given the track layout in the maintenance bay, could
not perform the task in the designated location. The removal and installation of
batteries therefore required a more elaborate procedure, impacting overall facility
productivity (11). Installing new equipment and adding new maintenance capabilities
can allow staff to complete more maintenance on-site, which can reduce supply

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chain issues and vehicles down for parts and improve quality assurance and overall
vehicle reliability. Facility upgrades can also improve work processes and improve
overall facility productivity. Higher productivity raises the facility’s effective capacity
and can help postpone costly facility expansions.

For these maintenance goals to fully considered and implemented, it is critical for
railcar maintenance staff to participate in each stage of the procurement process
for a maintenance facility replacement or upgrade, including planning, design,
and construction. As with any major capital investment, design changes later are
more costly to correct and may not have any cost-effective remedy. As for a
vehicle procurement, maintenance stakeholders can help define specific business
requirements which address current operational needs and issues. They can also
play an important role in design review to ensure the practical functionality of the
design. Finally, maintenance managers must lead the transition planning, which
encompasses moving into the new or upgraded facility while maintaining operations
and which might include interim measures to accommodate onsite construction
while continuing maintenance operations.

A Commuter Rail Operator’s

Maintenance Facility Transition

When a U.S. commuter rail operator began planning of its new central maintenance facility, the agency’s
fleet maintenance contractor was conducting light maintenance at outdoor sidetrack locations, and the
agency had no heavy maintenance capabilities. The new facility was intended to expand the share of
maintenance conducted in-house, improve working conditions and safety, and raise the quality of fleet
maintenance and overall fleet reliability.

The operator’s maintenance staff had extensive input into the facility design process. In the early project
planning stages, the operator’s engineering staff analyzed which maintenance tasks performed off-
site were driving maintenance costs and vehicle availability. Based on this analysis, the requirements
for the new facility included the capabilities to bring the most critical activities on-site. As part of the
requirements building process, project staff also reached out to peer agencies for design ideas and
lessons learned. Design reviews emphasized maintainability: efficient equipment positions and workflows
to maximize the facility’s efficiency and effective capacity. Other benefits of the new maintenance facility
included significant environmental features, such as trackside power to eliminate diesel locomotives’
idling and easier recycling of oil and other materials. Sanding and washing equipment onsite has helped
improved the quality of service with cleaner train exteriors and more frequent painting of coaches.

From the project’s groundbreaking through completion, an assistant manager representing the fleet
department was onsite to support the agency’s construction management staff and help oversee the
contractor and provide input. Ongoing construction oversight meant that the contractor delivered the
project meeting nearly all requirements, and a minimal number of modifications were needed after
completion.

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A Commuter Rail Operator’s

Maintenance Facility Transition (cont.)

The most challenging aspect of the project from the perspective of maintenance operations was the
transition into the facility. In order to overcome the concerns of the maintenance contractor, reach
consensus around critical issues, and ensure a successful changeover without any interruption to
revenue service, the operator’s fleet managers developed a comprehensive transition plan over the
course of a year and a half. Through the stakeholder working group and technical assistance from
consultants, the transition plan addressed issues such as the new facility’s inclusion of equipment for
heavier maintenance, including drop tables, a wheel truing machine, and an overhead crane. These
would allow the operator to lower the average turnaround time for repairs and improve maintenance
quality through reduced reliance on outside vendors. However, maintenance workers needed extensive
training to use the equipment, and the operator had to plan to conduct the training before the new
facility’s opening while the new maintenance equipment remained under warranty. Finally, the new
equipment and facility necessitated that the operator comprehensively revise its maintenance operating
procedures. Using a three dimensional model of the site, the fleet maintenance contractor’s employees
were able to map out maintenance processes for the new facility from the arrival of a train through each
chain of maintenance activities. Once the new procedures were finalized, the maintenance managers
developed a training plan to ensure that staff would successfully transition to following new procedures,
working with consolidate operations, and using new equipment. The transition plan relied on seven
intermediate steps to manage the move in to the new facility. Through its successful planning process,
the agency avoided any significant issues during the transition and was even able to accelerate the
changeover.

The operator’s fleet managers believe that the sense of ownership and pride of the workforce are critical
factors to sustain a high quality railcar maintenance program. The managers saw the opening of the new
central maintenance facility as an opportunity to shift the maintenance culture to a stronger customer
and quality focus and used training to support this goal. At the new central maintenance facility, the
workforce now benefits not only from high quality working conditions, but also from better employee
facilities like locker rooms and receives clean uniforms. Since the opening of the facility, to sustain the
facility’s performance and reinforce its commitment the new maintenance culture, the operator’s policy
has been to maintain the facility looking in new condition.

Together, these factors improve the workforce’s morale and contribute to a commitment to quality. The
agency’s recent performance-based maintenance contracts have also helped supported the cultural
transition. The operator’s fleet managers are responsible for contractor oversight and compliance. The
maintenance contract provides a firm standard for performance and ensures the operator’s managers
can hold maintenance staff accountable to a high standard.

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Key Success Factors

Ø The department provides requirements and design review for major
fleet maintenance facilities construction projects to maximize the
facilities’ safety and productivity.
Ø The agency uses best-value procurements for major facilities
construction projects.
Ø The department uses cost analysis to support decision-making related
to design process, for example to determine which maintenance
capabilities are necessary for the facility.

Purchasing and
Materials Management
The materials management department’s focus is on providing an efficient
supply chain service for maintenance and other departments. The materials
management department may have other titles, including “Inventory
Control,” “Inventory Management,” and “Procurement.” For the purposes of
this report, this function is referred to as “materials management.” It is the
railcar maintenance department’s responsibility to determine the materials
requirements and manage the materials budget. The purchasing department’s
responsibility is to meet those requirements at the lowest possible cost and
with minimal delay in supplying the part. Materials management manages
the internal supply chain and collaborates with the railcar maintenance
department to manage inventory levels. The overall goal of materials
management is to provide the railcar maintenance staff with the right parts,
of sufficient quality and in the right quantity, at the right place and time for an
acceptable price (12).

Better management of inventory and purchasing can have the following

benefits:

• Lower ongoing inventory cost through fewer overstocked and obsolete

items
• Improved vehicle availability through faster repair times
• Reduced material costs through reduced waste of parts, lower freight,
and lower procurement cost for parts
• Reduced materials management costs since inventory staff spends less time
expediting parts and tracking the progress of high priority orders (13)

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In agencies where the materials management department and railcar

maintenance department are separate, these improvements require their
close collaboration planning maintenance and managing the supply chain. They
also require shared performance improvement processes and effective quality
assurance and quality control processes. The following sections discuss each of
these topics.

Inventory and Purchasing Roles and Responsibilities

To maintain a successful supply chain for parts, railcar maintenance staff should
have actively involvement in materials management. The most important
responsibility of the railcar maintenance program is to communicate the expected
materials needs, timing, and priorities. Maintenance workers are responsible for
completing requisitions accurately, getting proper authorization, and keeping open
requisitions updated as needs change. Maintenance, inventory, and purchasing staff
must observe all inventory security and record-keeping policies and measures. On
the other hand, it is important for materials management to maintain a focus on
customer service to the railcar maintenance workers and their support role in
railcar maintenance (14). Figure 7-2 highlights each group’s responsibilities.

Figure 7-2
Responsibilities
of Railcar
Maintenance
and Materials
Management
Departments

Frequent planning meetings between maintenance supervisors and inventory/

purchasing staff can improve communication and ensure on-time preventive
maintenance. A weekly, biweekly, or monthly meeting can cover maintenance
campaigns, running rehabilitations, seasonal changes, and preparation for
upcoming inspections, so that the inventory department can understand
fluctuating parts needs, ensure the parts are on hand, and minimize the

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possibility of a delay due to parts. Such meetings typically have a standard

agenda, which covers routine planning areas, as well as special agenda items to
address particular challenges (13).

Inventory Optimization
For a railcar maintenance program that conducts heavy maintenance and uses
many thousands of distinct parts over the course of a year, optimization of
the inventory requires expertise and analytical capabilities. It also requires
effective supporting information systems with materials required identified
and their use recorded through the computerized maintenance management
system (CMMS). The CMMS must also integrate effectively with the materials
purchasing system. Without these elements in place, it is difficult to maintain
effective inventory and purchasing functions.

One example of how these elements can be used in materials management

is the consideration of risk. For each part needed in the system, the railcar
maintenance staff can answer the question “what is an acceptable level of
risk related to running out of this part?” For instance, a part whose stock
out results in a vehicle remaining out of service likely has a high stock out
cost relative to the value of the item and, therefore, requires a conservative
stock level and re-order threshold to minimize the risk of a stock out. Such
considerations should inform decisions regarding optimal stock levels in the
central warehouse and other stockrooms (12).

Close collaboration between the railcar maintenance and inventory functions

helps avoid storing excessive parts through joint planning and performance
improvement efforts. Weekly or biweekly meetings between the railcar
maintenance planners and foremen and materials management staff helps
ensure a strong working relationship and good communications channels
between the two functions. Having a dedicated analyst supporting purchasing
and inventory who can closely track data and perform sophisticated analyses
usually generates substantially more savings than the position costs.

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Inventory Forecasting
Overall, railcar parts and other materials tend to fall into two major use
patterns: predictable use or random use. Items with more random use
patterns tend to require relatively higher stock levels all other factors being
equal. In either case, efficient management of the inventory relies on accurate
forecasting. Maintenance of accurate demand forecasts relies on high quality
data from the maintenance management system’s inventory component to
determine:

• Historical demand: typically the use of parts by week, month, or other

timeframe over a fixed historical period
• Lead times based on the typical time from the item request to receipt
• Planned maintenance as communicated by the maintenance department

The inventory function of the MMS should be configured to provide easy access
to this information. Based on this information and the ABC classification, the
inventory department should be able to determine the re-order point and the
economic order quantity (ROP/EOQ). With thousands of items to management, it
is useful to have a MMS capability to suggest for ROP/EOQ rules and to rapidly set
rules for multiple items based on various selection criteria (13).

Historical inventory and purchasing data can be used to develop control rules
for individual items and classes of items. It is possible to develop standard
control guidelines for items that exhibit particular characteristics. An item’s
past and expected use can be used to identify its necessary lead time, its
frequency of order, its variability in ordering rate, seasonality factors, its
criticality to bus “up time”, the availability of the part in the market, and
other critical factors. Despite the high number of factors, most items will fall
into a limited number of profiles relative an inventory that may contain tens
of thousands of items. This modest number of profiles makes it easier to set
management rules for large numbers of inventory items.

Inventory QA/QC
Inventory accuracy is critical to ensure proper allocation of material costs,
enforce accountability for the use of materials, ensure the delivery of the
correct parts, avoid loss or theft of materials, and avoid unexpected stock
outs. Moreover, an accurate inventory can best support railcar maintenance
activities by minimizing supply chain delays, which can ultimately reduce railcar
maintenance costs. This section describes the importance of standardizing
parts requests, having an established quality control process for when parts are
received, and having effective inventory QA/QC processes.

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Standardization is an effective quality assurance tactic for materials management.

Most transit agencies have processes in place to put to together a kit, or bill of
materials, in preparation for scheduled maintenance and rehabilitations. In fact,
these can be created and stored in the CMMS. The railcar maintenance program
can use this approach not only for routine preventive maintenance but also for
any minor or major maintenance campaign. The maintenance manager shares the
scheduled tasks with the parts store, where kits are prepared and delivered in or
adjacent to the work station in advance. Such preparation reduces a mechanic’s
set-up time and increases their productivity. Kits also play a quality assurance
role by removing the need for a mechanic to identify and locate the correct part.
Inventory staff can take advantage of lower demand shifts to compile kits for
preventive maintenance jobs scheduled through the CMMS (10). Performance
improvement teams can use processing mapping to further enhance such
processes.

Inventory accuracy begins at the receiving end: ensuring items delivered match
invoices and are efficiently distributed for end use. For instance, receiving staff
can record any inconsistencies between parts ordered and received with respect
to accuracy of contents, timeliness, and quality in the CMMS to track vendor
performance. For proper cost accounting, each part that leaves the storeroom
should be accurately tied to a particular work order and expensed to a particular
project or account. This ensures the maintenance department can accurately
track the cost of each procedure and its parts requirements. Maintenance
workers and inventory staff must work together to ensure accuracy is maintained
through the entire internal supply chain until the final use of the part (13), (12).

It is important to have a process in place to follow up on inventory and materials

issues such as high levels of inaccuracy found in cycle counts or parts returned by
maintenance to inventory. For instance, the former might be an indication that
maintenance employees are not adhering to storeroom procedures. The latter
example might indicate part quality issues or the placement of multiple orders
by maintenance staff because of uncertainty about part availability. Likewise, it is
important to make the most of existing QA/QC processes.

Materials Management Process Improvement

ABC classification is one of the most common optimization strategies to
organizing inventory items for improved control, minimized parts stock-outs,
and reduced ownership costs. The classification system is embedded within the
CMMS and used to assign effective inventory control rules to large groups of
parts based on shared characteristics. Parts categories can be defined based on
several factors: the value of the item’s total annual turnover, the frequency of
an item’s request by maintenance, and the variability of the request rate. Other
factors include the lead time for orders, the scarcity of the item, the cost of an
out-of-stock event, and the storage requirements for the item. Items within

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a category will have similar usage patterns. Class “A” items account for the
highest proportion by value of the inventory’s turnover, and turn over more
frequently. Therefore, class “A” requires the most intensive management.
Examples of Class “A” items in the railcar maintenance department might
include: critical suspension and propulsion components with high value, long
lead times, and significant vendor risk. Successive classes (as many as are
needed) represent a smaller share of investment and have proportionately
lower priority (13), (12).

Higher priority classes benefit more from stricter control measures: more
frequent cycle counting, frequent review of demand requirements and
re-order rules, and closer tracking of and follow-up on orders. In ABC
classification, inventory staff should make stocking decisions first at the
commodity level and then at the individual item level only when necessary.
Inventory staff can also use ABC analysis to determine whether to stock
items at a central warehouse or in local storerooms, using criteria such as
lead time and frequency of use to determine the most appropriate stocking
location and quantities. It is important to have a process in place for checking
the effectiveness of the ABC classification and for regularly updating it (13).

As with other maintenance processes, it is possible to deploy many of the

TPM performance improvement methods discussed in Section 3 to the
inventory and purchasing functions. For instance, process mapping is a
helpful strategy to improve the layout of a storeroom to improve access to
frequently-used parts and minimize walking time. Likewise, regular quality
circles with inventory staff can help ensure storeroom layouts continue to
meet operational needs. Such strategies are critical when a storeroom has
limited space: an under-sized storeroom requires more intensive management
including more frequent re-order of parts and more reliance on a central
warehouse (13).

Predictive maintenance also has implications for materials management

and performance improvement. The ABC classification can help determine
whether it is worthwhile to rebuild or recondition a part upon its removal
from the vehicle. If it is feasible to recondition a part, the next step is to
develop an effective testing approach to select parts for reconditioning or
disposal (10). If appropriate, such procedures should be embedded in the
CMMS as business processes. Such documentation reduces the unnecessary
replacement of expensive parts and ensures they enter the proper workflow
for reconditioning onsite, at a remote location such as another shop, or at
the OEM or another external vendor.

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Key Success Factors

Ø The materials management department effectively prioritizes
requisitions for fulfillment.
Ø The materials management department effectively allocates all
materials costs to specific assets and jobs.
Ø The agency’s fleet maintenance planning processes facilitates
cooperation between maintenance and materials management staff.
Ø The materials management department uses ABC classification or a
similar strategy to optimize its inventory.
Ø The railcar maintenance department uses the Total Productive
Maintenance approach (or a similar approach such as “Lean Production”)
in collaboration with materials management staff to realize continuous
improvement in the railcar maintenance supply chain.
Ø The materials management department has effective quality control
measures in place to ensure the quality of parts ordered and received
and the ongoing accuracy of the inventory.

Information Technology Support

Information systems are foundational for managing railcar maintenance, especially
for lifecycle management. High quality IT systems ensure maintenance managers,
planners, and engineers have access to comprehensive vehicle data to plan work,
schedule work, monitor work performed, vehicle condition, and the lifecycle
costs of their assets. IT systems support tracking of maintenance activities,
performance management, communication, data and decision analysis, planning
and scheduling of maintenance actions and resources, supply chain management,
contract management, and data and documentation management (15), (16), (17),
(18), (19).

The computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is the primary

management control tool for maintenance. The CMMS may manage a variety of
work streams to integrate people, technology, and business processes. CMMSs
help manage such complex operations through the following functions:

• Resource control – improved accounting for labor, equipment, facility, and

other resources
• Cost management – improved cost accounting and reporting
• Scheduling – improved scheduling of complex maintenance operations to

better balance work load with maintenance capacity and priority

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• Integration – integration of maintenance business processes with other

agency business needs and processes

• Performance improvement – continuous performance improvement by

providing a framework for collecting data, updating business process, revising
documentation, and supporting rapid deployment of other changes in
maintenance practices (17), (16)

Currently, the industry is continuing its transition from CMMS to the next
generation CMMS/EAM, which has expanded functionalities. For instance,
traditionally, most data analysis has occurred outside of the CMMS.
However, vendors are increasingly incorporating analytical tools to support
root cause analysis, predictive maintenance, lifecycle cost analysis, and risk
analysis. CMMS products are also offering more sophisticated planning and
scheduling tools, automating and optimizing many of these tasks (20). While
newer systems are in many ways much more user friendly, they still require
dedicated expertise to maintain business processes and data integrity and
to maximize use of the available functionalities (16). Figure 7-3 shows typical
agency transit asset management systems and functions within the context of
the overall agency information systems architecture.

Figure 7-3
Conceptual
Enterprise Asset
Management
System
Architecture

Source: Rose, et al. (22)

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Work Order System

The work order system is the heart of the CMMS. It should recommend
and record resources necessary for a maintenance job. It should facilitate
assignment of appropriate personnel. It should also document steps,
methods, tools, parts, and safety procedures for standard jobs and provide
access to complete documentation. The work order system should monitor
and record the progress and execution of all maintenance tasks. Finally, it
should record the most relevant information for analysis of maintenance
work to support performance improvement. The work order system should
include integration with the materials department to support requisition of
parts and tools. The asset inventory links all work orders to specific asses.
The CMMS should interface with the ERP to ensure carryover of labor costs,
purchasing costs, and other critical cost information to the CMMS to support
cost accounting by job and asset (18).

Work orders are generated from maintenance issues, each of which should
be assigned a priority level by maintenance managers in order to manage
use of maintenance resources. The criticality of a maintenance issue is
typically determined by the criticality of the asset and the impact on the
vehicle. All maintenance issues and work orders should have a target date
for close out based on their criticality. The maintenance schedule provides a
comprehensive plan for preventive maintenance jobs for each asset type and
individual asset (18).

This section stresses the importance of the CMMS’s asset inventory as a

basis for tracking data, it describes how IT systems can support the railcar
maintenance department’s performance improvement activities, and it outlines
railcar maintenance managers’ responsibilities with regards to IT.

Asset Inventory: a Critical CMMS Function

One of the most important features of a CMMS is that it maintains the transit
agency’s physical asset inventory. Typically, the inventory is hierarchical, starting
with the lowest maintainable unit and building up to the high-level asset, in
this case a railcar. Therefore, a railcar is made up of various vehicle systems,
which in turn may have subsystems and key components. Figure 7-4 provides an
example of an asset hierarchy for a light rail vehicle.

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Figure 7-4
Example Asset
Hierarchy for a
Light Rail Vehicle

Source: Adapted from Humphrey et al. (21)

As discussed in the FTA’s Asset Management Guide (22), the asset inventory
includes key descriptive characteristics, such as the component asset tracking
identification number, its manufacturer, model number, location (e.g., current
vehicle and assigned maintenance facility), and installation date. The asset
inventory is the basis for the organization of CMMS’s preventive maintenance
schedule and its equipment history, which tracks important performance data
for vehicle maintenance. Such performance data include past maintenance
tasks performed, cost accounting (labor and materials), and inspection and
test measurements. These data are the basis for critical vehicle maintenance
activities including diagnostics, performance modeling, and condition-based
maintenance. The asset inventory process also supports enterprise-level
business processes (for example, capital programming and operations and
maintenance budgeting).

Another important function of the CMMS’s asset inventory is to track critical

components over time. Such tracking supports crucial analysis of maintenance
effectiveness and the improvement of preventive maintenance. For example, the
asset inventory allows a record of bench test results for a particular system.
When the historical test results are matched to the assets’ work records
and compared across assets, it could potentially help the railcar maintenance
department to understand the relative quality of different component
manufacturers and help improve purchase decisions and parts specifications.
Alternately, the same data might help to better time maintenance based on the
deterioration of asset performance. Neither analysis is possible without tying
the test and work records to specific assets. Therefore, the asset inventory is
critical component of railcar maintenance record keeping (23).

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Overall, the railcar asset inventory should reflect a level of detail that meets
the railcar maintenance program’s data collection needs. It is typically most
cost-effective to focus on tracking the assets with higher criticality and
preventive maintenance requirements. As discussed in Section 4.1, critical
components are those with some combination of important business
impacts, such as critical safety functions, poor maintainability, and poor
reliability. For railcars, this covers a range of assets from air conditioning
units to suspension components. It is now standard practice for agencies
to require manufacturers to populate an vehicle inventory in the CMMS as
part of the delivery process, and the procurement team should participate
in the definition of the inventory. The inventory is linked to the preventive
maintenance requirements and schedule set up in the CMMS.

Performance Improvement and the Role of IT

As discussed in Section 6, performance management is a data-driven,
management control approach to track all activities and investments
throughout the railcar’s life to ensure that the agency’s goals are consistently
being met in an effective and efficient manner. Information technology can
aggregate data from diverse activities and processes to support performance
management and provide workers throughout the railcar maintenance
organization with ready access to timely and comprehensive data.

The CMMS work histories can support performance improvement by helping

managers understand the performance of individual mechanics and help
address issues with training and better assignment of tasks. For example, one
transit agency’s internal audit of preventive maintenance practices revealed
significant number of tasks that had not been completed with quality issues.
Because the CMMS was configured to support the tracking of such issues
back to the mechanic or team who completed the preventive maintenance
inspection, it was possible to follow up on individual issues and ensure
individual workers’ accountability for such issues (24). At some agencies, each
list item in a preventive maintenance inspection requires the sign off of an
individual mechanic who is accountable for its proper completion. When a
system fails an inspection test or a mechanic identifies a needed repair, these
should be entered and tracked in the CMMS. Many agencies use the detailed
data collected by their CMMS to benchmark task work times and to account
for the cost of individual tasks to support performance improvement efforts.

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Integrating Onboard Systems with the CMMS

Increasingly, agencies and vendors are supporting integration between
on-board vehicle computer systems and the CMMS. The application
programming interfaces (APIs) for late generation CMMS applications can
support integration with a wide variety of systems and the collection of more
diverse and timely operating data from various vehicle systems (31). Moreover,
communications-based train control systems can support direct monitoring
of the onboard computer system and relaying of operations data and fault
information to the maintenance department in real-time (28). Through the
vehicle’s onboard computer system, maintenance management systems can
capture sensor data from nearly every vehicle subsystem—information such
as temperature, pressure, status, and position—which can improve diagnostics
and testing. With handheld mobile devices increasingly available to use with
maintenance management systems, vehicle maintenance workers can access
workstation functions as they physically work on the vehicle, potentially
improving effectiveness further (35).

For larger heavy and commuter rail operations, real-time availability of

onboard diagnostics along with effective vehicle tracking can provide useful
data to support decision-making. Maintenance staff can use the real-time data
to increase maintenance operational efficiency, taking railcars out of service if
necessary and better prioritizing and routing railcars as they enter maintenance
facilities. In some cases, the information lets the maintenance facility prepare
for the car’s arrival, ensuring a faster repair and improving vehicle availability
(35). As new generations of railcars enter service and CMMS capabilities expand
and improve, significant opportunities exist to make even more use of onboard
computer systems’ capabilities. Both maintenance engineers and vehicle
procurement teams should collaborate with a CMMS analyst to understand the
data generated by critical vehicle subsystems and carefully consider how the
information might be logged and reported in the CMMS. Such data can be used
to automatically generate work orders and schedule maintenance and support
greater use of condition-based maintenance.

Maintenance Managers’ IT Responsibilities

Railcar maintenance managers should promote a maintenance culture that is
disciplined in its use of the CMMS to preserve the integrity of the system’s
processes and data. Good data management derives in part from high quality
systems and implementation, but it also involves the people who use the
tools and are responsible for data accuracy and usefulness. Quality assurance
measures include limiting who has access to update the database, or limiting
content that can be entered into input fields. High quality data is clearly
defined and provides an accurate and up-to-date picture of the operation’s
status, actions, and resources (16).

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The following provides a list of good practices around CMMS usage that railcar
maintenance managers can promote:

• CMMS procedures should be clearly established, documented, and communicated.

• All maintenance staff should have a consistent understanding of how to use
the CMMS based on regular trainings.
• Managers need to conduct regular spot checks to verify adherence to
protocols for use of the CMMS, including reviewing work orders to ensure
mechanics and technicians are properly completing work orders and entering
information in a timely manner.
• Maintenance managers should promptly address any failures to meet

standards, if necessary with training, adjustments to procedures, or

modification of CMMS forms.

• Directly enter data into the CMMS, wherever possible. The use of log sheets
to document maintenance issues or work results in redundant effort to input
data into the CMMS, more data errors, and less timely data.
• Where possible, CMMS forms and business processes should emphasize
automatic validation, clear coding of information, and automatically-generated
exceptions when tasks and work orders are not properly completed,
approved, or closed out in the CMMS.
• To the extent possible, management reports, whether real-time status reports
or periodic performance reports, should use the CMMS’s automatic query
capabilities and rely on data within the system. Reliance on offline tools and
data results in less efficient use of managers’ time, poorer data quality, and
compartmentalization of information (16), (25).

Not following these good practices may compromise the ability of managers to
implement performance-based maintenance through the CMMS.

Internal Audit and Quality Assurance

One transit agency’s internal audit of its railcar preventive maintenance practices
revealed that some preventive maintenance tasks had been signed off on as
complete, yet the quality assurance inspections showed no work had been
done, required tests were not administered, or that vehicles had not passed an
inspection test and the mechanic had not followed up to resolve the issue (24).
This example shows how quality assurance inspections are critical for maintaining
accountability and revealing labor-related issues before they become systemic.

At another agency an internal audit included a review of a random sample of

CMMS work orders and revealed that work orders were not being closed out
in a timely manner, were missing essential information on maintenance tasks
completed, and had miscoded failure modes. According to the audit, these issues
reflect a lack of awareness among frontline employees about proper procedures
for use of the CMMS, insufficient commitment to compliance with CMMS work
order procedures on the part of some staff, and deficient validation and quality
control measures in the CMMS to ensure data completeness, accuracy, and
conformance to maintenance procedures (25).
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Key Success Factors

Ø The railcar asset inventory in the CMMS supports effective tracking
of performance and cost of the lowest maintainable unit (e.g.,
individual vehicle doors, diesel engine transmissions, or critical truck
components).
Ø Managers use the CMMS as the system of record for all management
reports related to railcar maintenance.
Ø The department maximizes the testing, inspection, and onboard
computer system data collected in the CMMS to support ongoing
performance analysis.
Ø The department has an analyst to provide ongoing support,
improvement, and QA/QC for the CMMS.
Ø Managers track and enforce employees’ adherence to CMMS
procedures.

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U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Transit Administration
East Building
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
http://www.fta.dot.gov/research
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