Swedish data solutions company Predge is expanding its footprint in Australia with its operation-and-maintenance software package for rolling stock, aimed at enabling predictive maintenance and increased operational efficiency.
The company’s analytical predictive products have been developed in close collaboration with customers to ensure that the software is tailored to the specific needs and challenges the industry is facing, providing them with the most effective predictive insights possible.
Predge Country Manager in Australia, Tommie Åkesson, said the most widely used product from Predge is one simply called Rolling Stock, and as the name suggests, helps predict failures in rolling stock operations. It estimates remaining useful life and assists organisations in taking better decisions based on high quality information.
Already widely used across Europe, Predge believes this product will be of considerable benefit to rail operations within Australia.
“Over time, we have kept close to our customers to learn from their unique needs and experiences in the rolling stock industry,” Åkesson said.
“We are now taking further steps through an expanded offering to meet the customers’ needs for flexibility and scalability, enabling them to face new and unique challenges.”
The Cloud-based product consists of a core package and additional features separated into three categories: analytics, decision support, and automation.
Åkesson highlighted the company’s agnostic approach for data acquisition and integration.
“Early on, the company decided to be hardware-independent. We believe that most often sufficient data is available on the customer side, but there remains untapped value potential in the operations. Hence, the key is to convert the data into actionable insights in the organisation for better decision-making, both short term and long term,” he said.
“We take a holistic view of the operations where we ingest wayside data, operations data, maintenance data, workshop/inspection data, etc, to be able to draw deeper conclusions and deliver the decision support.
“General rolling stock operations may look the same on the outside, but there are usually specific challenges related to any operational setup. To meet such variability, Predge Rolling Stock was packaged such that the primary needs and problems can be easily matched with specific product features on top of a core module,” Åkesson said.
The product is strengthened by its hybrid modelling approach, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning principles along with established physics of failure techniques to make highly accurate predictions.
As well, Predge Rolling Stock can automatically generate work orders, a feature that has been welcomed by many clients.
“We currently have several customers where our analytics insights are converted into work orders and automatically delivered into the asset management system, such as Maximo or SAP,” Åkesson said.
“It reflects the level of trust that our customers have built up with us, that they are confident in our analysis for the outcomes to be converted into company operations.”
Find out more about Predge Rolling Stock in the April issue of Rail Express or meet the team at the Heavy Haul Rail Conference in Perth on March 29-30.
.png){kind=small}
