Record Time for Railway Vehicle Levelling and Wheel Load Balancing
The video above shows the vehicle levelling and wheel load balancing taking place at Ashford Rail depot. The Hitachi team completed a unit in record time last week. The whole 6 car unit took under four hours to complete – this is all the more impressive when you realised that before ExcelWraps was introduced the process took 7 days! The data collected by ExcelWraps is continually reviewed using live reporting tools to see how the process can be improved. In our April review the data showed that:
- The flatness tolerance of one of the WeighWell at Ashford had drifted over time and required adjustment.
- The load applied on bogie bench press at Doncaster must be applied with a greater degree of accuracy (within ±25kg).
- The vehicle weight records from original build and 3 year overhaul were concatenated to give the most accurate weight estimate.
By ensuring that the bench press load is as close as possible to the tare load of the recipient vehicle no readjustment of primary suspension shims was required at Ashford. All levels and wheel loads were within tolerance first time. This accounted for the record time for levelling and load balancing the 6 car unit we achieved in May. Getting things right first time is the goal we endeavour to achieve.
The beauty of the ExcelWraps is its ability to change. Simply modify a spreadsheet and the wrap is regenerated (old data can still be viewed through the regenerated wrap). No software engineers are involved and the shop floor are unaware that any tweaks that have been made. Engineering systems are not simple and we learn and improve our approach all the time. There nothing better than ExcelWraps to put data at your fingertips and to put engineers at the centre of the processes they control.
Here is a timeline chart (derived from the Wrap creation and Wrap freeze timestamps) to show their record breaking time:
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Related Articles:
Railway Wheel Load Balancing and Vehicle Levelling