Railway Track & Structures - August 2008 - (Page 41)

against specific assets. For example, there may be a daily track walking assignment where someone has to walk that track twice within a week, with two days between those inspections. We build a structured plan schedule that generates a work order. The inspector would get that work order in his inbox each day. “If we have cooperative inspections between disciplines such as c&s and the track department, we work with both deputy chief engineers of those disciplines and we take the requirements and we model them so the system can support the operations,” he noted. “IBM’s Maximo has been a platform by which we have modeled track inspections throughout the Northeast Corridor for the past couple of years,” Broughton pointed out. “We have just fully implemented that all track inspections are generated through Maximo. Track inspectors go into the system on a daily basis to report their accomplishments.” Matching labor to tasks “One of the most challenging aspects is to record labor against the specific activities that we do, then link it to the cost of the asset that is being inspected or maintained,” said Amtrak’s Willem Ebersohn, program director, engineering systems. “Maximo has given us the opportunity to know not only that the inspection or the work was done, but also the cost associated with that inspection or work against the asset. You don’t have a separate system where you record your time and your maintenance information. It’s really important from a management perspective that we know the cost associated with our operating expenses and our capital expenses to the asset.” Broughton continued: “One of our first challenges was that we wanted to cost against the inspection, as well as the cost against the asset. So we originally tried to procure a cost system that would be able to handle our labor data. We had some unique cultural challenges. We have quite a few different unions throughout the corridor, so we had different rules to comply with. We also had what I consider a unique challenge in the sense that we wanted to enter time from a number of people such as a gang or a large crew. We wanted to have a full audit system, we wanted to have a full electronic approval system and we wanted to enforce some of the business rules so that when people submitted their time, they didn’t encounter rejections, that the system would enforce the rules and help them along. “Prior to our implementation of time management, it generally was a paper-based system,” Broughton said. “There were some electronic systems in place, but it was not conformed universally across the corridor. We still had people filling out time sheets and Fed Exing them in every day. “We took an application within Maximo and we customized it to fit our culture,” he said. “That is the labor entry system that is used for our entire unionized work force within engineering. On a regular basis, the foremen will go in to Maximo and enter the information for their gangs in bulk. The system enforces the approval hierarchy as a supervisor has to review and approve that before it goes to the payroll group. If a supervisor edits it, it forces it to a higher level. This is an example of enforcing a business rule. No longer do we have to send out documents on changes to www.rtands.com Railway Track & Structures August 2008 41 http://www.unitrail.com http://www.rtands.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Railway Track & Structures - August 2008

Railway Track & Structures - August 2008 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Wish List: What Chief Engineers Really Want in M/W Machinery Keeping Ballast in Shape Amtrak Turns to Sophisticated System to Manage NEC Assets Supplier Profiles Products and Literature People Calendar Sales Representatives Website Directory Advertisers Index Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.