COMPONENT TRACKING
GREATER VISIBILITY BY GREGG PHILLIPS, PRODUCT MANAGER, COMMERCIAL ANALYTICS AND REPORTING, RAILINC
40 Railway Age // November 2020
a major impact on safety—these components have been the first focus of industry technology developers. The North American railcar f leet has traditionally been maintained under regulations and processes that relied on historic component performance across very broad railcar categories. For example, freight car wheels have needed to be inspected visually each time a car arrives at a staffed maintenance facility. With the advent of the Equipment Health Management System (EHMS) more than a dozen years ago, the industry developed rules and repair processes for sensor-based component inspection systems that significantly enhanced traditional visual inspection processes.
These rules and processes effectively prevent most undesirable incidents, even though most wheels would not experience a catastrophic failure until long after the required inspection and removal thresholds. THE NEXT SAFETY FRONTIER The industry is now developing applications that promise even safer and more efficient operations. These advances started in 2013 with the inauguration of the Comprehensive Equipment Performance Monitoring (CEPM) program, now known as the Component Tracking program. It is a multi-phase, multi-year initiative to create an industry process and related railwayage.com
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dentifying railcar components and tracking their health is critical to the safe and efficient operation of North America’s freight railroads. In an industry with about 1.6 million revenue-earning cars, annual equipment maintenance spending might approach $2 billion. The benefits of more efficient component tracking and equipment-health analysis are potentially significant. The application of advanced technology is providing greater visibility into the condition of critical components, including wheels, axles, bearings, truck systems and draft systems. Because they account for the highest level of railcar maintenance and replacement costs—and have
