Maintenance as a service: a proposal for differential maintenance
Alberto Antón, Service Manager Ikusi
In the railway environment, train managers seek to maximize train operating time, i.e., train availability, as well as to reduce the number and duration of unplanned stops, in order to improve the quality of service provided to users. They seek, therefore, operational benefits, which translate into business benefits by not incurring additional costs due to the unavailability of trains.
From this point of view, maintenance is a cornerstone in the life cycle of the trains and it values the contribution of partners such as Ikusi, which thanks to the experience accumulated over more than 20 years in the railway sector, to which it adds the IRIS railway certification, can provide the best practices in advanced maintenance services.
As a result of this experience, Ikusi has developed an integrated maintenance service model, which allows adjusting the service to the specific demand during the duration of the contract based on specialized lines of work jointly defined according to the requirements and needs of the customer.
These lines of work are maintenance (preventive, corrective, adaptive and evolutionary), repairs, spare parts management, equipment replacement and obsolescence management, and service support (configuration support, engineering support).
For each line of work, and based on a history, indicators and service level agreements are defined and managed according to the needs of each customer, and are monitored month by month, adjusting the sizing of each of the tasks to be performed dynamically to the real needs.
The service is monitored on digital tools in which incidents and reports are managed and the client has traceability of what is happening, with a 360º vision. This, in turn, allows the monitoring of all data to be processed and applied to the continuous improvement of the service.
Likewise, as a technological ally, Ikusi adds to the fleet maintenance support service the evolution of the systems, periodically incorporating new technologies in order to eliminate obsolescence problems and address potential future functionalities.
From a financial point of view, Ikusi’s integrated maintenance service model provides customers in the railway sector with long-term security. Contracts are established for several years with a global price for each line of work, but with flexibility so that at any given time the support service expenditure is really focused where the customer’s business needs it. This approach transforms maintenance into an operating expense that provides flexibility, agility and scalability, and that adjusts dynamically to the real needs of the customer at any given moment, always guaranteeing the best support service.
With the implementation of this integral maintenance service model, Ikusi has managed to improve the service it offers to its customers, to whom it has reduced costs by sizing efforts in a planned manner and focusing on the most critical tasks in advance.