Modelling rail track deterioration and maintenance: current practices and future needs

As commercialisation and privatisation of railway systems reach the political agendas in a number of countries, including Australia, the separation of infrastructure from operating business dictates that track costs need to be shared on an equitable basis. There is also a world-wide trend towards increased pressures on rail track infrastructure through increases in axle loads and train speeds. Such productivity and customer service driven pressures inevitably lead to reductions in the life of track components and increases in track maintenance costs. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review of track degradation modeling, as well as an overview of track maintenance decision support systems currently in use in North America and Europe. The essential elements of a maintenance optimisation model currently under development are also highlighted

Maintenance Task Classification: Towards Automated Robotic Maintenance for Industry

AbstractThe business model of high-value capital assets is shifting from purchasing a physical product to acquiring a result or a function supported by the product combined with a number of related services. One such service, maintenance, is perhaps the most efficient way to keep the function available during the product lifecycle. Automation has played a vital role in industry throughout history, particularly within the production line. With the movement towards providing product service systems the need for services such as maintenance are increasingly important for a manufactured product, and the pull towards automation may drive down costs and improve performance time. Although currently robotic applications to maintenance beyond monitoring and inspection tasks are not common, this research aims at exploring the feasibility of future maintenance robots that can perform a variety of maintenance tasks. As its first step, this work looks first at investigation, cataloging and classification of a number of maintenance tasks using standard industrial engineering techniques such as time motion, method or workflow analysis. This involves decomposing the maintenance work into a number of ‘unit tasks’ required to be performed in order to accomplish the specified maintenance

Productisation business model in non-OEM aero-engine MRO service providers

The combination of product and service to provide customer’s satisfaction has been known since 1990s in the aerospace industry, particularly within MRO (Maintenance-Repair-Overhaul) service providers. Initially, the OEMs offered servitisation solutions by bundling the product with services. However, to remain competitive, the non-OEM MRO service providers also initiated bundling its service with products as offerings. This productisation business model is a reverse approach of a servitisation business model. This paper identifies and proposes five types of the productisation business model and each of these types will be shown with a descriptive analysis and illustrations to highlight the understanding of the evolution towards providing offers by bundling services with products. Through this study, non-OEM aero-engine MRO service providers will be able to assess the most suitable business model, based on the MRO service provider’s strengths and challenges

Sustainable Decommissioning of Offshore Platforms: a Proposal of Life-Cycle Cost-Benefit Analysis in ItalianOil and Gas Industry

The decommissioning of offshore Oil & Gas platforms, at the end of their life cycle, has been a very controversial topic in recent years. Moreover, the decommissioning complexity increases if we consider a shift towards a linear economy to a circular one. The latter pushes to innovate business models and re-configure the value chain activities in a sustainable way. Starting from these considerations, this work aims to identify a cost-benefit model suitable for evaluating sustainable business models of offshore platforms. After a literature review of different models for analysing maintenance and decommissioning Real Options (ROs), the Life-Cycle Cost-Benefit (LCCB) analysis has been selected as the most adequate managerial tool for evaluating and comparing the Net Present Value (NPV) of platforms compared the maintenance and decommissioning costs. The LCCB tool could aid the managers in the oil and gas industry to quantify the decommissioning and maintenance costs including capital expenditure (CapEx) and risk expenditure (RiskEx). In the future steps, to test the LCCB model, an empirical analysis could be carried out on a sample of organizations interested in the sustainable decommissioning of offshore platforms

Pricing and Profitability of Global Maintenance Service

Nowadays, very few of the machine manufacturers offer only machines to the customer but rather tries to offer different sorts of services to them as spare parts and maintenance. Furthermore, the literature has examined the shift of machine manufacturers to service providers and has given suggestions on management of the servitization. However, literature does not include that much research about the pricing of machine manufacturers’ service business. Thus, many manufacturers use only cost-based pricing to their maintenance work and do not take the customer perceived value into account. In addition to this, the global environment makes the pricing situation even more complex because different markets have different characteristics that have an impact on pricing. Therefore, the study brings a new viewpoint to the literature of the manufacturers’ service business by adding a pricing point of view to it. Furthermore, the study expands the literature on the value-based pricing and pricing process towards the industrial service business. This thesis is based on the case study, which is done to the large global machine manufacturer’s maintenance pricing, which does not include the maintenance contracts. The idea of the thesis was to investigate how to systematize the pricing of the hourly-based maintenance work by analyzing the pricing situation with the pricing process provided by literature and building the pricing model, which takes all the related factors into account. The topic was approached by creating a pre-understanding of the literature and the case company. The actual empirical study included both quantitative and qualitative analyses in terms of the theory given by the literature. The study finds out that the market characteristics and the pricing determinants, which are customer perceived value and costs, are the main factors, which affect the selection of the pricing model. Market characteristics as competition and customer characteristics have an impact on the objectives of pricing and pricing strategies, which together define the business model. The business model, in turn, defines how the manufacturer wants to pursue the whole maintenance business, which affects the price structure. Although that exact customer perceived value is difficult to define, this can be used to form the pricing structure, which depends on the complexity of the work and urgency of the need. In addition, the costs determine how much the manufacturer has to get from the customer at least, so it has an impact on the pricing policy. The pricing model should lead to the desired direction so that the manufacturer can obtain their objectives. The pricing structure should be based on different works rather than different customers and should have different price levels for preventive and corrective maintenance as the corrective maintenance generates more value to the customer. In addition, the structure should have higher prices for urgent work and overtime because the customer values those when they have a need. Although the pricing model is value-based, it can use the gross margin to reflect the value differences. Furthermore, the model should work as a framework for local units and allow discounts for good reasons, so that the prices are based on local needs and have the flexibility to obtain long-term profitability

A conceptual model for EAI adoption in an e-government environment

The non-integrated nature of Local Government Authority (LGA) Information Systems (IS) is strongly associated with the inconsistency and duplication of data, reduction in data integrity and quality, and high operational and maintenance cost. The reason is that legacy IS within the LGAs are usually tailored to support particular business processes and functions and are as a consequence usually difficult to integrate. This gives rise to a strong need for an integrated architecture that facilitates reuse of existing applications and flexibly implementing business processes across the functional boundaries within the LGAs. This paper examines a potentially important area of IS integration in the United Kingdom (UK) LGAs through Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology. A review of the literature indicates that EAI has been a focal technology for several organisations in solving their integration problems. However, is new in the LGAs; thus research literature around it is limited. Yet the effect of IS integration using EAI technology remains under explored, as little research has been conducted to comprehend the LGAs perception of integration that influences their decisions and actions. The author demonstrates that it is of high importance to investigate this area within LGAs and result in research that contributes towards successful EAI adoption. Therefore, resulting in the development of a conceptual model that may be used to assist the government decision-making process for EAI adoption in an electronic Government (e-Government) environment

Customer-centric business model for remote monitoring services

Development of industrial internet has made it possible for industrial manufacturers to remotely monitor and collect data from their installed base and serve their customers with new and innovative services such as condition-based maintenance. Despite some previous research, there is still uncertainty on the most important customer needs for a remote monitoring service and through what kind of business model should the services be offered. Offering services with inadequate knowledge of the customers’ needs has led to ineffective offering and value propositions slowing the spread of these services. Through a single case study of an industrial manufacturer, this thesis aims to discover what the most important customer needs and business model fundamentals of remote monitoring services are to create understanding for further service growth. The empirical part of this research was conducted as a qualitative case study. The primary data were collected with semi-structured interviews and the secondary data consisted of documents originally from a recent internal development project of the case company. The sources for collected material were both internal interviewees and respondents from customer companies operating in process industries. The results indicate that the two main customer needs for remote monitoring services in industrial maintenance are increasing the asset output and reducing maintenance costs. Other important needs were found to be getting access to the service provider’s expertise, adding predictability to maintenance and achieving safety improvements. It was also found that different needs are closely linked with each other. A new business model framework for remote monitoring services was proposed. The developed framework was used to structure elements for a successful remote monitoring service business model. Implementing the business model will require new capabilities in understanding customers’ businesses, new sales capabilities and technological capabilities in order to develop valuable insights from collected data. The results confirm earlier findings of value propositions and value proving as crucial parts of business models in remote monitoring services. Collaboration between customers and the service provider was found to be a potential way to create value in remote monitoring services. However, experiences of value co-creation in deeper level are still behind the examples from literature. Remote monitoring services and collaborative value creation were found to be compatible with outcome-oriented earning logics and there was interest towards it on both customer’s and supplier’s side. To gain more understanding on outcome-oriented earning logics, further research of defining and sharing the achieved benefits, especially in complex multi-actor environments, is proposed

Digital transformation in the manufacturing industry : business models and smart service systems

The digital transformation enables innovative business models and smart services, i.e. individual services that are based on data analyses in real-time as well as information and communications technology. Smart services are not only a theoretical construct but are also highly relevant in practice. Nine research questions are answered, all related to aspects of smart services and corresponding business models. The dissertation proceeds from a general overview, over the topic of installed base management as precondition for many smart services in the manufacturing industry, towards exemplary applications in form of predictive maintenance activities. A comprehensive overview is provided about smart service research and research gaps are presented that are not yet closed. It is shown how a business model can be developed in practice. A closer look is taken on installed base management. Installed base data combined with condition monitoring data leads to digital twins, i.e. dynamic models of machines including all components, their current conditions, applications and interaction with the environment. Design principles for an information architecture for installed base management and its application within a use case in the manufacturing industry indicate how digital twins can be structured. In this context, predictive maintenance services are taken for the purpose of concretization. It is looked at state oriented maintenance planning and optimized spare parts inventory as exemplary approaches for smart services that contribute to high machine availability. Taxonomy of predictive maintenance business models shows their diversity. It is viewed on the named topics both from theoretical and practical viewpoints, focusing on the manufacturing industry. Established research methods are used to ensure academic rigor. Practical problems are considered to guarantee practical relevance. A research project as background and the resulting collaboration with different experts from several companies also contribute to that. The dissertation provides a comprehensive overview of smart service topics and innovative business models for the manufacturing industry, enabled by the digital transformation. It contributes to a better understanding of smart services in theory and practice and emphasizes the importance of innovative business models in the manufacturing industry

Corporate social responsibility: Managers perception of CSR

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a self-regulating model of business which helps organisations to be socially accountable. This research report on CSR is based on journals and articles, and aimed at demonstrating the importance of CSR and investigating the perception of managers towards the concept of CSR. The research study identifies the value which managers and higher authorities have given to the maintenance of corporate social responsibility in an organisation. The scope of the study places an emphasis on implementation technique and the way in which CSR practices can be accommodated within the business model. This study defines various levels of the CSR practice used by the managers of an organisation and shows how they benefit from it. The levels of CSR practice help the managers to run business with societal, ethical and economic responsibilities. It also explains the relationship between CSR practice and its outcomes. The literature of CSR, which includes the policies of CSR and some of the internal and external factors affecting CSR, is discussed. The study figures out the problems related to CSR and defines its effectiveness on business. This research work clarifies the impact of CSR on business policies and also the effectiveness of CSR on the social environment. The data collection method used for this study was a questionnaire. The feedback of the questionnaires is still in progress with the organisations and soon the results should be updated to the research study

The strategic impact of airline group diversification: the cases of Emirates and Lufthansa

The airline industry is a diverse sector, requiring the support of a varied range of ancillary businesses such as maintenance, catering and travel agencies to carry out its activities. Many of these supporting businesses demonstrate the potential to drive wider profit margins despite generating lower revenues than the airlines themselves, making them attractive investment opportunities in a sector prone to volatile and often lacklustre trading. This study investigates two of the largest diversified airline groups, Germany's Lufthansa Group and Dubai's Emirates Group, each adopting a distinct approach towards diversification that may serve as a model for airline groups worldwide. The areas investigated were Cargo, Maintenance, Catering and Travel Services. The research found that whilst diversification may not always present the most attractive option financially, strategic factors can often outweigh such concerns. Business units studied were found to have variable prospects; particularly in the case of Catering, a sector on the rise – versus in-house Maintenance, which for airlines, is likely to see decline. The pursuit of third party revenue streams to offset weak internal trading and growth in competencies were found to be the key drivers of success. Interplay between segments was also apparent, showing that a well-organised diversification strategy can achieve robust cross-functional benefits and deliver significant value to the parent organisation