Astronics
Building a Better Passenger Experience
Maintaining a state of good repair by incorporating a building block approach to Bench Test Equipment.
Keeping your fleet in a state of good repair is essential to maximizing your transit assets, minimizing schedule delays, and improving customer satisfaction. One area of concern for transit agencies is fleet readiness and the availability of trains during peak hours.
The ability to maintain your fleet while also delivering on-time performance is invaluable and significantly enhances the passenger experience.
An added benefit of maintaining a state of good repair is that fleet downtime is greatly reduced due to quick turn-around of assets undergoing maintenance.
Additionally, with self-maintenance (or organic maintenance capabilities), operators can greatly reduce the amount of spares inventory required to maintain their fleet. The vehicle is back in service faster and more cost effectively than sending equipment out to a repair house.
Bench Test Equipment (BTE) that is universal (or addresses various aspects of testing) and scalable (with the ability to expand) can benefit rail car builders, OEMs, and transit authorities with a comprehensive, flexible platform.
Test solutions for the transit market can be broadly categorized as follows:
- Consolidated BTE: Primarily included on new car contracts to provide testing for multiple OEMs. Typically delivered to support the transit authority repair shops for car-wide electronic repair.
- Focused BTE: Supports testing of a particular sub-system such as door electronics or HVAC. OEMs may not need such a broadly targeted approach for consolidated BTE and can meet customer requirements with a scaled down test system as part of the overall sub-system delivery.
- In-House BTE: Where OEMs can leverage the same BTE on their own manufacturing floor to support the build and test process. Having similar test support in-house and in the field can be a great advantage and cost savings.
