Bottom line: reliability

Railway Age, June, 1992 by James R. Lundgren, Peter W. French, Thomas S. Guins, Carl D. Martland

Targeting the ultimate payback-customer satisfaction-AAR's research program seeks to maximize research contributions to the enhancement of rail service reliability.

In comparison to their primary competition, long-haul trucking, the rail industry's performance is perceived by too many shippers as inadequate for successful retention or expansion of market share.

A quest for quality service permeates today's transportation marketplace. "Just in time," "seamless service," "partnershipping" and "warehouseless distribution" have quickly become part of the rail industry's lexicon. Decisions are driven by total distribution costs, not the price of specific transportation services.

The annual Temple, Barker and Sloan (now Mercer) shipper surveys have regularly highlighted the competitive issues. Their 1990 study conclusion is representative: "Motor carriers outdistance their rivals in virtually all categories, with their greatest advantage coming in transit times and reliability." AAR's own survey of research found one of the industry's most significant challenges to be the provision of a rail transportation service "high in service quality and reliability."

Faced with a minimal return on investment, a declining market share, a profitability decline and productivity growth constraints, the industry must achieve revenue growth. Improved service quality, particularly reliability, is one avenue to enhanced profitability. Applied research can help.

* The R&T response.

The AAR is responding to the challenge. In late 1990, a new subcommittee of the Research and Test Department's Research Committee was formed to sharpen our focus on the reliability issue. The objective is to improve the coordination between projects seeking reliability improvements and develop a research plan having a strengthened reliability component. Several broad goals were set:

-Address the need for service reliability improvement.

-Update our understanding of the nature and causes of service reliability failures.

-Encourage joint industry research to address service reliability improvement.

-Develop and demonstrate improvement options.

What is service reliability? It is consistently delivering the freight where and when the customer wants. For time-sensitive traffic 95% adherence to a four or six hour window may be required. For bulk traffic, it may entail a 99% adherence to preservation of minimum stock-pile levels. Service providing a high level of consistency will be viewed as unreliable if it is not timely. Service is what the customer says it is.

Service quality and reliability are being aggressively pursued by our member railroads. The AAR also has a vital role in addressing reliability from an industry perspective. For rail to be the mode of choice, customer satisfaction will be driven by a smoothly functioning interchange network as much as by individual carrier performance. Pooled industry resources leveraged through AAR will provide efforts cost-effective solutions having greater utility and compatibility.

As in the past, R&T is involved in the solution of traditional reliability issues, focusing on preventing failures of track and mechanical components. More recently, interline service management, multi-road pooling arrangements and locomotive traction motors have received attention. In response to the reliability initiative, the R&T committees have increased budgets and the priority assigned to research on braking systems, journal bearings, bridge fatigue life evaluation, traction motors, and interline service monitoring.

To chart an effective course for future work on service reliability, the Subcommittee on Reliability has implemented a multidisciplinary approach to the challenge. Subcommittee members represent a wide range of disciplines: operations, customer service, mechanical, engineering and research. AAR's efforts will become more effective through integration of individual program efforts within R&T and through close coordination with other AAR departments, the new Customer Services Division of Operations and Maintenance in particular.

Various issues were chosen for immediate action.

-Component reliability

-Trains stopped for false hot box readings.

-Locomotive traction motor failures.

-Undesired emergency brake applications (UDEs).

-Bearing failures.

-Air brake failures.

-Signal failures.

-Operations

-Meet/pass planning.

-M/W planning and coordination with operations.

Current efforts are building the quantitative framework for addressing the service reliability issue. The what, why, and how questions surrounding rail service reliability must be answered. Our first objective is to quantify the current status of reliability. What is today's performance in terms of consistency of service? How does our current service match with the reliability perceptions and expectations of our customers? At what service levels would revenues be enhanced and what are the cost-effective ways to meet demand elasticity? With the assistance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a number of member roads, the development of a data base for benchmarking current performance is well underway. MIT is studying the consistency of boxcar traffic using the AAR's TRAIN II entries as a data base. A parallel analysis on intermodal movements and bulk shipments will round out the survey.