Lucchini RS Group is a steel group with a history of more than 100 years. It operates with two divisions, offering a diverse variety of high-tech products and services:
- Production of high-end railway components: wheels, axles and wheelsets intended for high-speed trains, locomotives, passenger trains, streetcars and subways.
- Production of patterned and cast forgingsfor various application uses such as electric, oil and gas generators, offshore platforms, cement processing, industrial plant engineering, steel and iron production plants, or ship transportation.
The needs of Lucchini RS and the railroad industry.
The new generation of services, on reading performance data in real time has become a must in all industries. The rail transportation industry is no exception. In an industry where fleet reliability and availability are key levers for increasing efficiency and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), condition-based maintenance (CBM) represents a quantum leap in maintenance for rail operators.
McKinsey estimates that CBM can not only reduce maintenance costs by 10 to 15 percent, saving 7.5 billion a year globally.
These are huge savings. Even for regional rail and cargo operators, condition-based maintenance becomes a crucial factor in staying competitive and growing their business. However, there are still significant profit losses and technology gaps in rail maintenance.
Until now, inspection and testing of train rolling stock have been some of the most complex and sensitive problems facing rail operators and rail OEMs. The entire rail transportation industry lacks a scientific tool that defines the correct maintenance periods, calculated according to the specific conditions of use. This is a major source of cost for service operators and maintenance managers.
Today, inspection intervals on wheelsets are not directly related to actual service conditions nor are they based on an approach related to crack propagation.
In addition, trains are often suspended from service limiting their availability to check critical components, including wheelset axles, causing inefficiency and further increasing maintenance time and costs.
Lucchini RS’s answer: Smartset
Integrate on train axles an intelligent sensor, which continuously records the in-service loads to which the wheelset is subjected, in the form of bending and torsion stresses on the axle, creating the spectrum of these loads in real time.
IoT data is collected and sent directly to Cloud Storage from trains operating around the world. Leveraging the SAP Cloud Platform service, the data is stored in an SAP HANA Database and processed with the Starcrack algorithm.
By combining technology, big data and advanced analytics, the Smartset system is then able to accurately estimate how many stress cycles a wheelset receives, their level, where it receives them and, finally, to define when axles should actually be checked based on their actual level of use. As a result, optimal maintenance intervals are identified with scientific accuracy.
Regesta’s role with the Regesta LAB team.
We have been supporting Lucchini RS Group on its digital transformation journey for many years, and in this project we combined our knowledge of SAP Cloud solutions with our IoT expertise. The combination of these aspects allowed us to create the so-called “Digital Twin” within the SAP Cloud Platform; it is in fact a digital twin that mimics product activity, through data collected automatically from sensors.
It is then possible to monitor performance and detect possible abnormal behavior. To make such information available to the customer, we have created a dedicated Cloud application.
Smartset undoubtedly represents a modern system in step with the digital transformations around us, and it enables new business scenarios such as predictive maintenance.For more details on the SmartSet project, visit the dedicated website.
