WABTEC has celebrated in the official opening of its first Transit Performance Optimisation Centre (TPOC) for Europe in Derby, Britain.
Wabtec says the new centre has been created to help customers in the transport sector improve operational performance and reduce service costs and lost productivity through real-time monitoring and analytics.
Wabtec adds that opening the TPOC is a major step in its expansion and growth into transit asset analytics and condition monitoring. Across Wabtec’s four worldwide TPOCs – located in the United States, Brazil and Kazakhstan - technicians monitor around 10 million pieces of data per day on the health status and performance of transit systems around the world. The centres also monitor more than 18,000 assets including freight locomotives 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
With transit systems, Wabtec’s monitoring can predict potential train and sub-system failures before they occur, allowing the scheduling of maintenance without disrupting trains or their passengers.
Rolling stock leasing company Porterbrook is the first rail business in Britain to use TPOC to monitor its fleet of 4000 passenger rolling stock assets. The TPOC will help deliver enhancements to three of Porterbrook’s key projects: class 170 DMU powerpack “power by the mile”, class 158/9 and 168 DMU oil analysis; and class 172 DMU powerpack analysis.
“This is a welcome investment from Wabtec and we look forward to the benefits that the new TPOC in Derby will bring to the industry,” says Mr Ben Ackroyd, chief operating officer at Porterbrook. “Better performance controls and analysis will help Wabtec and asset owners such as Porterbrook jointly provide more dependable whole-life asset management capabilities to passenger and freight operators.”
