Creating Value by Integrating Logistic Trains Services and Maintenance Activities

NedTrain is the Netherlands Railway's subsidiary responsible for rolling stock maintenance. Train sets are brought in for short-term routine maintenance after set intervals of some 75 to 120 days. When a major defect occurs, train sets are allocated to one of the three maintenance depots and are diagnosed and repaired. Removal from active service causes large amounts of withdrawal of trains. In the traditional production concept, major defects could not be repaired on spot by the service organization. A lack of knowledge and equipment forced the National Fleet Control Centre to send the trains to the maintenance depots. This led to the insight that an upgrade of the service process could lead to a substantial improvement of the availability of the fleet.NedTrain re-modelled the traditional production concept and decided to invest 25 million euros in 4 additional Technical Centres, strategically placed on major nodes in the train service operations. In these new Centres, major defects are repaired during the night. Also, the routing of empty trains to the depots is prevented. The Utrecht Technical Centre was opened in Spring 2014; the other Centres will start operations shortly. This investment will lead to an improvement of the fleet availability by over thirty cars (worth 60 million euros), savings that can be cashed in the next round of ordering rolling stock. This paper describes both the preparation of the service processes and the first results, measured in the Utrecht-case.