From fixing old trains to connecting them to the cloud.
I started my career as business consultant in an IT company. After few months, and with my strong background in electronics engineering, I had the chance to move to Alstom and I didn't hesitate for a single second.
- My first position in Alstom was as maintenance engineer working for TGV-A fleet in Spain, during the time in this position I was able to achieve an incredible amount of knowledge about how trains worked.
- Three years later, I was proposed to be the person in charge to deploy a monitoring device to read data from the old train computer. This was a success and the prototype moved to be a reliable solution installed in the whole fleet.
- With the fleet monitored, I started to lead a team of engineers in charge of monitor the fleet in real time and analyse data, by doing this, we were able to increase the reliability of the fleet and reduce the operations penalties by 50%. During this time I started prototyping new solutions based in IoT technologies to monitor different systems of the train, not only the main computer.
- The prototyping went incredibly well and we started to deploy new devices in the fleet, monitoring the traction control units, auxiliary systems, etc.
- Now, we create digital solutions for different fleets all over Spain, we don't just deploy monitoring devices but also create data visualization solutions, machine learning algorithms, BI reports, etc.
I design and deploy digital systems in different fleets.
As digital asset manager my role is to design and deploy digitalization system in different fleets. After receiving the requirements from the different customers, it's time to analyse the train architecture, investigate and propose the best hardware solution that can be integrated in the train. When the hardware solution is approved, it's decided how the SW is going to be developed, in this stage, it's really important to understand the communication protocols and how the train will be connected to the cloud in the future. Finally, I'm also in charge of validating the design of the data visualization that will be accessed by the final user of the tool.
I'm also in charge to ensure that both the hardware selection and the software development is fully compliant with the European railway regulations, which is really important for the solution to be validated by the different bodies (assessment and notification).
Put all the train data in the cloud for everyone to use it!
When you work in train maintenance you realize that, no matter how good the maintenance you do to the trains is, every revenue service is a challenge! This is even more noticeable in legacy fleets, when the trains are older, you even have less feedback from the diagnostic tools. When we started developing monitoring tools and deploying them in the fleets, we were not blind anymore, we were able to see how the fleet was performing during service, and it was a relief for us, we started working better and more motivated, the customer satisfaction rate was highly increased and we could give a best service. Now, we not only deploy remote diagnostic systems for the fleet, but also create visual solutions for operators, customers (now they can see the train's occupation, coach temperature, speed, power consumed, etc.), apply machine learning algorithms to forecast how some system will perform depending in the environmental variables, etc.
The highest motivation for me is knowing that there is still so many technology to implement in trains to improve their reliability and user experience for the customers!
Don't settle for what you know, there are always new things to try!
It is amazing how the technology is evolving every year, even month. New technologies are always arising and making our lifes easier. What's really important is the need to be aware of this technologies and to be always thinking if these technologies can be applied to the business. This is really important, a new technology correctly applied to a train, fleet, etc. can be the game changer to win a contract. Most of the customers are not yet aware of the power of cloud computing, IoT, AI's etc. It's our job to take advantage of it and propose solutions they've never dreamt of.
My team was able to reduce operation penalties by 50%
When I joined Alstom, I started working as maintenance engineer in a legacy fleet. The trains were amazing and their reliability was top but they were a little bit old and the failure rate was a little bit higher than it used to. After deploying the monitoring system, we decided to create a well defined action plan:
- Analyse all the events and failure modes detected by the monitoring devices.
- Detect which of them are the ones impacting the fleet reliability, focus on the first 10 of the list.
- Analyse which part of the train do these defects impact.
- Perform specific action for each of the parts.
- Analyse the impact in the fleet.
By this new philosophy, we were able to detect which elements of the train were being degraded and impact the fleet reliability, and by overhauling or replacing them, the performance of the fleet was dramatically increased!
