LocoTech group of companies introduces more than 20 different solutions in the area of digitalization and automation in the factories to ensure stable operation as per life cycle contract system (LCC). This was stated by the managing director for strategy Ruslan Beglov in a speech at the International Railway Forum “PRO//Motion. EXPO”.

According to Ruslan Beglov, the most promising direction of development for locomotive industry within the implementation of LCC is the transition to a smart contract, a single (trusted) data sharing environment, generated by various digital technologies, which found its use both on board the locomotive, and in the depot management system. 

The use of digital technologies in the implementation of the LCC concept provides synergy in reducing the labour cost, improving transparency and objectivity, improvement of the operations rate. 

At the same time, the transition to LCC imposes the maximum responsibility before the customer - Russian Railways - in regard to solution technical level and machine quality on the service company.

Ruslan Beglov stressed that LCC mechanism must encourage the participants of the production process to continuously improve the process following the world's technical progress. It is necessary to develop a versatile scheme of accounting and effects section, which would be cost-effective for both parties. 

"The aim of LocoTech is to create a digital platform that will bring together all the market participants, which will be the key to effective work based on LCC system. We will be able to monitor and analyse the process of works execution or deviations from plans online, to identify the causes of these abnormalities, develop really effective corrective measures. This will bring the company to a whole new level ", said Ruslan Beglov.

 He also spoke about a number of digital initiatives, implemented in LocoTech enterprises. Among the most ambitious projects, he singled out such projects as Smart locomotive (implemented jointly with the Clover Group), Digital depot and own project of ACS Network Schedule. 

The Smart locomotive system allows assessing the state of the locomotive real-time and thus predicting the failure of a node without waiting for unplanned repairs. Currently, the solution is implemented in 11 series of locomotives maintained in 60 service locomotive depots of LocoTech-Service. Overall, LocoTech maintains 7.5 ths. sections of Russian Railways locomotives, which are equipped with a microprocessor control system (MCS) and are capable of recording data of the operating parameters obtained from sensors.

"Smart locomotive" system analysis result of is a list of incidents - cases of failures and irregularities in the equipment operation, as well as the probability of failure. Data received from the sensors is transmitted to Network schedule, where it is stored in the locomotive cards in the form of notes. Incidents and the probability of failure is planned to be used in the preparation of setting the schedule for servicing the locomotive, which will eliminate potential failures within the scheduled maintenance. As a result, the number of unscheduled visits to repair will reduce and the ORF will improve.

In the generation of a ten-day maintenance schedule based on the found incidents and observations the ACS Network schedule creates a list of overcycle works, plans the necessary resources, analyses the consumption of materials.

The Digital depo" project was launched in mid-2018, a pilot area has been the locomotive service depot Bratskoe. Today, more than 30 different organizational and technological solutions, combined in one system it introduced here. 

The basis of Digital Depot is formed by the data on the technical condition of the locomotive as well as on the resources of the enterprise itself. In case of successful implementation of the project we expect to scale the solution to the entire network. 

 The purpose of the project is to increase in the locomotive operational readiness factor (ORF, the main indicator of the service company operations performance) to 0.95, and to develop an optimal depot organizational and technological functioning model. ORF growth will be achieved by reducing the time for passing the current TR-1 repair and TO-2 maintenance, as well as unscheduled repairs. During the year it is planned to complete the integration of digital solutions into a single planning system.