Passenger Train Maintenance Exam Optimisation
Lean manufacturing practices accelerate maintenance delivery performance
- 3 minutes read
Our client is an ASX-listed company employing around 32,000 people spread over 300 sites in Australia and New Zealand to service the Transport, Energy, Construction and Mining sectors. The company holds a 30-year contract to maintain a new fleet of 65 passenger trains operating across suburban Melbourne. The need for an urgent turnaround in maintenance performance was identified to enable throughput and servicing turnaround times capable of meeting network demand.
ORBIZ was engaged and quickly identified several critical gaps in the maintenance operation relating to weaknesses in planning, process control, and performance accountability. Specific examples included misalignment between maintenance plans and task completion, engineering support needing a more disciplined approach and management deficiencies in task coordination, resulting in poor performance and low morale.
21%
$25M
40%
The approach
ORBIZ proposed a series of workforce engagement workshops with key personnel to standardise and balance the maintenance exam regimes to promote efficient resource planning and more effective overall fleet management. The outputs of these workshops would then become the basis for implementing a range of new standards that would undergo a verification and fine-tuning phase to maximise impact.
A process analysis was also recommended to improve understanding of the maintenance manual requirements and clarify scope issues. This activity would be done in collaboration with maintenance team leaders to identify root causes, allowing ORBIZ to perform a professional assessment of the current state and support the development of a future state vision aligned with project objectives.
The solutions
A new organisational structure was designed and established with clear reporting lines to promote accountability and improve morale. This included the addition of a new Exam Manager role, created to ensure that responsibility for on-time delivery was clearly defined within the organisation rather than spread across multiple team leaders. Team performance is now reviewed and corrected as necessary, improving overall morale and process discipline in line with more productive maintenance outcomes.
A Visual Performance Centre (VPC) was deployed to support the coordination of exam work plans and the allocation, control, and monitoring of team member workflows through to completion against the agreed scheduling and planning. Team members are now assigned a single workflow presented on a poster-format display that is updated and reviewed at each work break. This enables team leaders to identify workflow status and complete the plan quickly.
Engineering team representatives were engaged through regular planned meetings to address the various technical issues that arise daily when conducting maintenance work. Previously overlooked tooling and process changes are now being rapidly resolved, and, in some instances, workshop equipment that has been out of service for over two years has been re-commissioned, improving equipment availability and reducing delays.
Daily team leader and management status updates are now held in conjunction with the VPC, which inform attendees and, ultimately, the business about current progress and performance. A 10-minute forum allows planners to receive feedback and adjust schedules to accommodate unplanned changes, resulting in significantly less impact on the end customer.
The increased labour efficiency has enabled maintenance teams to conduct more training activities, further improving team members’ skills and versatility and enhancing the overall working environment.
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