POSS®: Railway Condition Monitoring developed by a maintainer

Railway Condition Monitoring (RCM) can be a great tool to improve the availability of your railways and lower the maintenance costs. Key factor for success of RCM is the implementation of the system in the organisation and the appreciation of the system by the users. This is where the POSS^® philosophy distinguishes itself by its special approach. The hardware design focuses on simplicity and reliability. The software focuses on user friendliness for all layers in the maintenance organisation. For the implementation of RCM Strukton Rail has a large number of experienced maintenance engineers, able to advise the management, to train the users and to avoid the usual pitfalls. Important also is the selection of assets to be monitored. RCM can only pay itself back when it contributes significantly to a higher availability or an optimised maintenance process. The development of POSS^® started in 1999 with Point Condition Monitoring which is still the most import RCM item. All experience acquired over the last 12 years is used in the design of the newest MicroPOSS data loggers that can handle any type of point drive on the market. The new software release 6.0 offers a further improved alarm generation. Other POSS^® applications include monitoring of: track circuits, wheel shunt, level crossings, expansion joints, rail temperature and rolling stock. A new concept is the monitoring of axle loads and wheel defect detection. The required maintenance activities on a railway line strongly depend on the axle load and the wheel defects of the passing trains. The new concept gives more transparency to the infra manager and can help to optimize the maintenance of the rolling stock. The new trend on railways to use more axle counters has led to the decision of the development of POSS8