Diagnosis and Prediction for a Successful Management of Railway Infrastructure

Abstract

Condition monitoring, diagnosis and prediction of railway assets are of growing interest for managers of infrastructure and rolling stock. They are facing rapidly increasing requirements for the asset operation. While other industries have long established methods and tools to monitor and predict the condition of their assets for an improved operation, the German railway organisations still maintains on a fix predefined time schedule. Due to the legal regulations, organisational structures, technical diversity of assets and the structure of the information technology it is a major challenge to apply condition based maintenance to the German railway system. This article describes the most important issues according to the background of railways and how some of them could be solved. It addresses the technological, organisational and economical requirements for an efficient use of monitoring systems in a condition based monitoring in Germany.