Diagnostic systems in maintenance management: a case study in italian high speed train

Performance requirements are more and more restrictive and binding for today’s production systems moving in the context of highly competitive markets. One of the most important requirements of new machines and industrial plants is to have high performances within their maintenance process. This issue can be considered as a “weak ring” of the productive system life cycle and even nowadays is too times neglected. In the present work we have concentrated our efforts on diagnostic systems, pointing out the way in which they can be a good answer to these new performance requirements for complex systems. As studies and application increase in number, it turns out clearly that implementation of diagnostics is synonymous of maintenance evolution, either technically and methodologically. This is also to be considered as a further managerial lever regarding production processes. In the present case study we have operated a technical and an economic comparison between two configurations: with or without diagnostic support. The main system reliability parameters have been evaluated in both cases. The object of the appraisal, through the study of the maintenance process achieved by means of a simulation approach, is the production and treatment plant for compressed air GPTA (Production and Treatment of compressed Air Group), running on the edge of the high speed Italian train ETR500.