Awaiting Public Project Summary

It is crucial to reduce rail operational costs as well as increasing the reliability of service especially in terms of punctuality. Train doors prove to be a critical element with respect to both maintenance cost and cause of train delays. Door actuator defects are the most common found; especially in older trains where door malfunctions amount to 25%-50% of the rolling stock defects. To overcome this, a consortium led by German SME Hitex, have come together with the aim to rapidly seize the business opportunity presented by commercializing the VA-RCM system. VA-RCM is a highly innovative condition monitoring system based on cutting-edge technology involving advanced vibration analysis techniques. Its unique features will enable accurate assessment of train door actuators as well as targeted feedback on subsystem malfunctions well in advance of their potential occurrence. Train operators and passenger train car manufacturers will benefit from the VA-RCM system by improving the efficiency of train doors and reducing the failure rate or downtime of trains, thus reducing maintenance cost. The consortiums vision is to achieve gross sales of 140 million by 2025; a ROI of 60.68 within the first 4 years of commercialisation; and business growth which will create 1298 new jobs. It is our strong belief that the Fast Track to Innovation Pilot is the ideal financial instrument for us to accelerate the commercialization of VA-RCM.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

This project represents the continuation of the work initially carried out through the In2Rail “lighthouse project” and mainly through the work of the IN2SMART project. These projects form together part of the framework of research and innovation that will deliver the vision and strategy of Innovation Programme 3. There is a demand for a step change in asset management to be delivered through innovative technologies, new economic possibilities, and enhanced legislative standards in the rail sector. As set-out in the S2R Multi-Annual Action Plan, the Intelligent Asset Maintenance Pillar is a driver to deliver innovative asset management, meeting the best practice set out in ISO55000 in the railway sector. The Intelligent Asset Management Pillar is an accelerator creating new and optimised strategies, frameworks, processes and methodologies, tools, products and systems for the implementation of a step change in risk based, prescriptive and holistic asset management in the rail sector. A series of vertical TRL 6/7 demonstrators, covering all Asset Maintenance Pillar aspects, such as data collection (TD3.7), data analytics and interfaces (TD3.6), decision support and lean working methods (TD3.8), will be defined and demonstrated in relevant environment, spreading the innovation results throughout European main railway and metro/tram lines. The demonstrator’s scope of work in the majority of cases will be on asset management optimization at tactical and operational levels, with a few examples of strategical ones. Innovation potential of aspects such as the utilization of a digital twin and robotic automated platforms will also be investigated in some demonstrators. Coherence and uniformity will be guaranteed through a common system architecture and Conceptual Data Model usage, common validation approach and final integrated demonstrator, enabling a common monitoring solution collecting heterogeneous inputs from various vertical demonstrators.

Over 50% global oil and gas is produced by offshore assets beyond midpoint of their design lives. 50% all asset failures related to technical integrity are due to ageing (MARS). Ageing assets therefore represent major hazards for offshore oil and gas personnel, the environment and the society. Europe accounted for 28% reported major accident loss of containment from 1980 to 2006, with 11 fatalities, 183 injuries & >€170M economic loss (HSE). The recent crude oil price drop is forcing oil and gas operators to increasingly focus on extending lifespan of existing offshore assets (above design life), as oppose to asset replacement. Assuring assets integrity and safety of personnel, environment & society also remains a top priority. 2016 oil and gas industry report concluded that new asset inspection technologies could generate €1bn p.a. for the sector. We timely propose to finalize a unique and first commercial system (ASPIRE) which combines & automates: asset inspection; inspection data analyses; and maintenance scheduling. The system will inspect & report maintenance schedules for critical assets (e.g. well conductor) within 1 day at cost of €4K. Current industry standard and state-of-the-art methods are fragmented: inspection companies generate large amounts of data manually, which is time-consuming (e.g. 5 days for well conductor), extremely risky (access hazardous environments without prior sound knowledge of asset status) and expensive. Inspection data is then passed to data analyses firm for interpretation/reporting (+5 days), followed by maintenance planning (+5 days), costing >€20K for the whole process for a 100m/24 well conductor. ASPIRE combines these 3 Steps in 1. It reduces inspection and maintenance scheduling time (1 day vs 15 days/well conductor) and cost (€4K vs >€20K). ASPIRETM will generate €49.5M revenue & €24.7M gross profit for SME-led consortium within 5 years (2019-2023),i.e. 10:1 ROI for EC grant, creating 62 new consortium jobs in the process.