Reliability analysis in railway repairable systems

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the application of various models to estimate the reliability in railway repairable systems. Design/methodology/approach The methodology proposed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), using homogeneous Poisson process (HPP) and non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) models, is adopted. Additionally, renewal process (RP) models, not covered by the IEC, are used, with a complementary analysis to characterize the failure intensity thereby obtained. Findings The findings show the impact of the recurrent failures in the times between failures (TBF) for rejection of the HPP and NHPP models. For systems not exhibiting a trend, RP models are presented, with TBF described by three-parameter lognormal or generalized logistic distributions, together with a methodology for generating clusters. Research limitations/implications For those systems that do not exhibit a trend, TBF is assumed to be independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), and therefore, RP models of “perfect repair” have to be used. Practical implications Maintenance managers must refocus their efforts to study the reliability of individual repairable systems and their recurrent failures, instead of collections, in order to customize maintenance to the needs of each system. Originality/value The stochastic process models were applied for the first time to electric traction systems in 23 trains and to 40 escalators with ten years of operating data in a railway company. A practical application of the IEC models is presented for the first time.