Using digital systems to better understand asset performance

Today’s cutting edge digital innovations in transport are helping the sector to collect and interpret data in better ways, improve how the entire railway ecosystem – from trains to tracks, overhead lines and signalling systems – can be optimised to save on maintenance costs and reduce energy consumption.

As a company, we started by building trains and moved on to maintaining trains. Today, the amount of data we are gathering from modern rolling stock is phenomenal. 

Terabytes of data are collected every day on every train, which help us to identify what more we could do to intelligently understand how trains are performing. Recently, we also looked at what data could tell us about the condition of infrastructure, and created a digital asset management platform called HMAX that brings information together in one space to interpret it for use in predictive maintenance. 

For me, digital means taking data, understanding what it tells us, and proactively using it to understand the way an asset performs. 

When I joined Hitachi, we were essentially a product company, but we have transitioned over time towards being one of innovation and incubation, which is about identifying new opportunities for using technology in different ways to create new market entry opportunities. 

It has meant demonstrating a bit of bravery to invest in new ideas, but at the same time understanding how that can support the goals we are trying to achieve as a business. 

One of the benefits this approach has brought is in helping us to find new partners to work with us, such as SMEs who may be very good at identifying innovative opportunities, but may not necessarily be able to bring them to scale.  

One example is on a battery trial on the TransPennine route. We took a bi-mode train that can take power from overhead wires, and also run on diesel. We took a diesel engine off the train and replaced it with batteries that came from the automotive sector in Sunderland and have been packaged in a box by a partner called Turntide Technologies. 

Without the input of that SME, I don't think we could have delivered that solution. 

We have strong links in the North East of England and have a great relationship with the North East Combined Authority, which is doing an excellent job of engaging industry to see what is the ‘art of the possible’, and how this can deliver tangible change in the local area. 

The Government’s Industrial Strategy is also very important, and the goal we are looking for is stability. Even though we're a large company, we have to make the investment case to enable extra manufacturing capacity to be located locally. 

The UK has to compete alongside some pretty big global opportunities, so we need to make the case for investment really strongly. That means working in partnership with our management in the rest of the business globally, but also with Government. And that has to be a two-way discussion. 

For our energy business, the Government’s 10-year Infrastructure Strategy will be really key because it will give us a really strong view on the direction that we need to go; and how we will support opportunities with new capacity. 

But at the same time, we need to have our own view on the direction that the market is going, and also find some different areas in which we could innovate a bit differently. 

In our own company we have got Vantara, our data storage business, which also is very heavily involved in data centres. And we've got Global Logic, which is a solutions business, which takes problems from companies, puts a process around it, and creates a digital platform. 

Digital is an area I believe we can maximise a little bit more, and we can use that as a footprint into innovating, and also building more widely business opportunity. 

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