Rolling stock maintenance strategy selection, spares parts' estimation, and replacements' interval calculation

The purpose of this paper is to permit an approach for: (1) selecting a maintenance strategy for rolling stock and (2) obtaining possible spare parts' quantities and replacement intervals for the components of rolling stock. The methodology adopts an analytic network process (ANP) technique for the strategy evaluation, because ANP considers the important interactions among evaluation factors. The ANP's result decides upon a proper rolling stock maintenance strategy formed by various combinations of preventive maintenance (PM) and corrective maintenance (CM). The ratio PM/CM, obtained by ANP, can help to predict spare parts' quantities of the components of rolling stock. The empirical result also indicates that preventive maintenance should be much more valued than corrective maintenance. In addition, safety is considered the most crucial factor for the selection of a rolling stock maintenance strategy. The fruit of this study serves as a reference for railway system operators when evaluating their rolling stock maintenance strategy and also when estimating their spare parts' quantities and replacement intervals for specific components of the rolling stock. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.