A System-of-Systems Approach for Enhancing Asset Management of Railway System

In Sweden, railway transport of freight and passengers is a significant portion of the total transport system. The demand for railway transport is forecasted to increase in the coming decades. One of the main reasons for this ever-increasing demand is the requirement for sustainable transport, nationally and globally. Today, railways are considered an environment-friendly option of transport. The increasing demands on railway transport raise the requirements on the efficiency and effectiveness of the railway system. From a system engineering perspective, the railway system is generally described to consist of two (2) main systems, i.e. a) railway infrastructure and b) railway rolling stock. Further, each of these two systems consists of a set of inherent interconnected integrated systems. Hence, from a system engineering perspective, the railway system can be considered as a System-of-Systems (SoS). Managing complex technical SoS, such as the railway system and its inherent items (also considered as assets), is complex and complicated, that requires a holistic systemic and systematic approach for asset management. A holistic and systematic asset management strategy, considering aspects of reliability, availability, maintainability, safety, and security, is essential in ensuring railway system proficiency. This SoS approach will enforce fact-based informed decision-making by enabling a comprehensive understanding of assets within interconnected systems, facilitating strategic, tactical, and operative planning and execution decision-making as well as tactical processes and operational activities. Augmenting asset management with data-driven analytics, with a focus on the maintenance of assets, is expected to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of asset management. However, challenges related to data quality issues and dynamic asset characteristics must be addressed to gain the anticipated benefits of digitalisation. Asset management of railway infrastructure has received substantial attention from within academia and industry. However, there is a noticeable research gap in the field of railway rolling stock asset management. The characteristics of the railway rolling stock system such as cross-organisational operation and maintenance, and the aspects of fleet management, poses certain challenges. These challenges are related to factors such as 1) the selection of maintenance strategies, 2) considering the dynamic nature of maintenance decisions and stra