The rail industry has faced a succession of challenges to improve efficiency, cost effectiveness and performance. We are now set for significant change in the industry and the need to deliver against these challenges is becoming ever more important.
In Unipart Rail, we believe these can be delivered with expertise, agility and engagement to power a real change in the way technology improvements can be driven through the supply chain to unlock potential for a more effective, efficient, high-performance railway. Our acquisitions including businesses in Signalling, Power Systems and Asset Management Solutions have demonstrated a drive to expand our capability across the principal technologies in the industry.
Unipart Group as an Industry Leader
Unipart is taking a leading position on the application of digital and Industry 4.0. We are engaged in a wide ranging programme to continually develop digital capability across our business and we are collaborating with a wide range of organisations, across industry and the academic world, to generate new and different ideas in technology.
We have developed our own centres of innovation. This includes the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering, a joint venture with Coventry University, pioneering the manufacturing methods of the future.
We also have embedded Unipart capability in such initiatives as the Hyperbat joint venture with Williams Advanced Engineering to innovate in the UK battery supply chain with high voltage battery systems, and advances in digital manufacturing at Rolls-Royce joint venture, MetLase, alsopoints to a business with an unrelenting focus on being at the forefront of technological change.
We are making huge advances in the deployment of Condition Based Maintenance, with Instrumentel’s technology now being deployed on vehicle fleets, delivering actionable data to TOCs to help them move to predictive maintenance. And in depots and warehouses we are making a difference by taking the supply chain right into customers’ operations with SmartServe delivering kits of materials direct to the lineside of vehicle maintenance, using our Inventory Management and Vending solutions, helping to deliver the faster turn-around of assets and increased in-service activity.
Unipart Rail has also taken an industry leading position in working with SMEs. These companies bring diversity and new innovation that help ensure the continued development of the railways. But the complexities of the industry can put up barriers to entry – and this can lead to transformative innovations being lost.
SMEs form a significant part of our business and supply chain, we invest in SMEs and help them develop. Our role is in enabling market availability to the SMEs – and making their products available to the market. It is through the development of a diverse capability in the supply chain that makes Unipart Rail a critical player in the creation of healthy pipelines of innovation to continually develop the industry.
Getting the Job Done – Now
The advances we are making in deploying technology and advances in supply chains are built on our day-to-day mechanical, electrical and electronic manufacturing, service, repair and overhaul capabilities that drive the circular economy – keeping the existing assets of the railways at peak performance and ensuring that scarce and obsolete parts are maintained whilst newer and more effective technologies are developed and deployed. Since 2017, the business has manufactured an average of over 100,000 individual products annually and repaired or serviced 90,000 assets, all across 4022 different product lines – a massive contribution to the industry.
Significant Signalling Expertise
Unipart has a significant footprint in signalling, although this is often not fully recognised by the wider rail industry. We work with many of the OEMs and support the supply chain to deliver signalling renewals, as well as maintaining and overhauling signalling assets and being a signalling technology innovator and OEM in our own right.
The breadth of our technology offer runs from LED signals and SSI signalling to solutions for ETCS and low cost signalling. This wide and varied range, when coupled with our supply of 3rd party materials, is also supported by the team’s technical know-how that goes beyond the supply of the equipment – we understand signalling systems and help our customers design and procure the best solution for their project.
Condition Based Maintenance
Much of the service/repair support that we supply to the industry is on the periodicity basis – working with MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) to ensure that a product never fails in service, but this periodicity doesn’t allow for how hard the assets work – on vehicles, doors can fail for many reasons, leading to unnecessary (and costly) preventive maintenance.
For example, with 30% of the time spent by vehicle in a depot estimated as being taken up by manual failure diagnostics, implementing condition-based maintenance to avoid asset failure in the first place can reduce that time by around 60% – increasing asset availability and enabling component maintenance rather than replacement. We think this can reduce train maintenance costs by up to 15% – a significant amount.
For a number of the ROSCOs, we are leveraging our digital capability in condition-based monitoring systems, which are being increasingly adopted by asset owners, operators and maintainers to deliver optimal maintenance programs and cost savings.
Condition Technology Built-in
This is why we invested in the acquisition of Instrumentel. With their experience of Formula One vehicle monitoring and improvement they are now developing a widening portfolio of assets that can be monitored and maintained based on their condition.
The solution, which takes data from existing monitored assets, fits other assets with sensors AND takes data from other systems and the environment, visualising it all in the Paradigm Insight system, provides our customers with rich data and automated decision making to identify and respond to asset degradation before failure.
Paradigm Insight builds that rich picture of an asset – a digital asset profile that enables continuous monitoring and a full picture that over time links asset, status, performance and cost.
The CBSC Vision
We have joined their technology with our digital supply systems to start building the Condition Based Supply Chain – the vision for a fully integrated asset/supply system that automates the entire supply chain to support:
- increased availability of assets
- reduced maintenance costs
- faster response times
- reduced in-service failure
- enhanced technology to improve end-user satisfaction
Bringing the Best of Automotive Manufacturing to the Rail Sector
Unipart Rail’s significant existing manufacturing capability is now drawing on our automotive manufacturing business to enhance our offering. This approach is already bearing fruit as we are now manufacturing rail plant at our Coventry facility where we are growing output and enhanced manufacturing services to our rail customers. This includes bringing our capability in new battery technology to the rail sector, and the automotive manufacturing standards and performance into the rail industry.
Investing In The Futur5
Unipart will continue to innovate and invest in new technology and capabilities that deliver real benefits and positive change for our customers. This includes developing low carbon, signalling and CBM propositions, increasing the sophistication of our supply chain solutions and developing the fully integrated condition-based supply chain.
Unipart Rail’s commitment to innovation is exemplified by our ongoing commitment as a founder member of the UK Rail Research Innovation Network (UKRRIN). Many readers will be aware of the UKRRIN initiative which will deliver a step-change in collaboration between the rail industry, universities, small and medium-sized business (SMEs), and asset owners to deliver innovations. Our route to market for new innovation generated by SMEs and academia through the UKRRIN initiative will accelerate the development of new technologies into the sector.
2021 will see the launch of the new ‘Innovation Hub’ for the UKRRIN Centres of Excellence at Unipart Rail’s offices in Doncaster. Here we will showcase new innovation developed by the Centres of Excellence and provide the ‘hothouse’ environment needed by smaller companies to grow their businesses and give them an industry mentor, manufacturing partner and sales route to our domestic and international markets.
Unipart Rail is the incubator and supply chain innovator, investing in building SMEs to embrace the changes the industry needs – we are here and ready to deliver efficiencies, cost effectiveness, resilience, performance and diversity, making the new innovations and technology available to the market.
We stand ready to embrace change and lead the way on meeting the industry challenges.
If you are an innovating business and are interested in working with us to access the market, email [email protected]
