Mobility on rails
rdc asset gmbh

About the customer

RDC Asset GmbH, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, is a subsidiary of Railroad Development Corporation (RDC) founded in 2019.Railroad Development Corporation is a U.S. company for operating railroads worldwide. The company is headquartered in Pittsburgh. Its business activities include assisting in the privatization of state-owned railroad companies by acting as an investor and later ensuring their operation. RDC Asset GmbH specializes in vehicle leasing and management. The vehicles can be rented as dry lease, i.e. renting the vehicle without personnel, maintenance and insurance, as well as with full service. The available fleet consists of seating cars (200 km/h), lounge cars (200 km/h), as well as the largest night train fleet in Germany, consisting of couchette cars (160 – 200 km/h) and sleeping cars (160 – 200 km/h).

Challenge

Until now, RDC had been using a self-developed maintenance system. This was now to be replaced by a holistic enterprise asset management system. Additional requirements for the new EAM system were interface compatibility with a GPS tracking system, as well as the possibility for the user to access the parking management system via a mobile device and to report any anomalies in the fleet.

"Since Maximo is already a very powerful tool out of the box, which is furthermore expandable at almost any point in its process diversity, our complex business philosophy could be fully mapped. Even with new chapters of our business diversity constantly being added, Maximo can effortlessly keep up."

Solution

The self-developed system replaced RDC with IBM Maximo. The Insight Control Panel from RODIAS was selected as the mobile solution. In preparation, a rough concept for the replacement was created in an initial requirements analysis. Based on this rough concept and a specification workshop, IBM Maximo was introduced. RODIAS set up the system and took over the implementation. Furthermore, RODIAS supports with the continuous maintenance and further development of the system. The solution manages more than 100 vehicles of the RDC. The hierarchical structure of vehicles and functional locations is mapped in the solution. The mobile solution includes an incident reporting system for the train attendants, so that the service personnel in the train can create messages for maintenance measures at any time. This means that any faults that occur can be reported directly and rectified in a timely manner.
The parking structure, i.e. the railcars and the various wagons, can also be accessed on a mobile basis. In order to keep the mileage readings of the fleet synchronized with IBM Maximo, an interface was developed that automatically reads out the mileage readings of the railcars and transfers them to IBM Maximo in order to store them on the respective equipment. Manual recording of the mileage readings is thus no longer necessary.
Furthermore, the warehouse management of RDC Asset GmbH is to be digitized in the future with the support of IBM Maximo and the Insight Control Panel.

use

The new solution offers a mapping of the processes for notifications and maintenance measures, as well as order and warehouse management. In addition, cost transparency is improved and the RDC receives a real-time overview of the condition of all vehicles.
The Insight Control Panel mobile solution has already facilitated the recording of messages for the train attendants and will also simplify the work of warehouse employees in the future.
The processes have been standardized by IBM Maximo and the data is transparent and up-to-date for all users thanks to the central storage in the IBM Maximo database.