SKF
How Digitalisation and Performance Improvements Can Help Us Move towards a More Sustainable Railway
- This article first appeared in the Railway-News magazine Issue 3 2022.
The global need for more sustainable transport means there will be more and more people travelling by train and a shift of freight transport from road to rail. As physical expansion takes time and is very costly, the industry looks to digitalisation and increased train availability to make the railways more efficient. Additionally, even though the railway is the most sustainable form of transport, there is rising demand to further decarbonise the sector.
SKF offers innovative railway solutions and services that improve fleet efficiency and reliability – and decrease lifecycle costs – while supporting the industry on the way to net-zero goals.
Pushing Performance to Increase Uptime and Availability
Innovations, developments and upgrades in bearings and units, related products and condition-monitoring solutions are important to make passenger and freight trains run reliably and sustainably longer: they help extend maintenance intervals and reduce the risk of unplanned stops, minimising the total cost of ownership.
Extended maintenance intervals and planned service stops only when needed help maximise rolling stock availability. Only replacing what needs to be replaced, and refurbishing rather than always buying brand new parts, also help minimise maintenance costs.
