Predictive maintenance may have a higher initial cost for the software, but studies have shown a typical 8 to 12 percent savings over the long run because of the increase in reliability and availability of the vehicles. Current maintenance processes typically run on a timescale, as opposed to the actual vehicle condition. Predictive maintenance turns this around and keeps vehicles up and running. Three companies share how today’s systems are advancing fleet maintenance and monitoring.

Continental’s KIBES-32
Continental offers KIBES-32, the next generation of onboard control and monitoring network for buses.

KIBES-32 is a complete, end-to-end diagnostics system that delivers innovative remote diagnostic and operational capabilities. With this system, users can easily see what’s working, failing or malfunctioning right from the driver’s instrument panel, a PC or a remote display at the service or management facility. This eliminates the need for maintenance personnel to physically inspect the vehicle when troubleshooting an issue.

As Matt Williams, Key Account Manager, Special Vehicles NAFTA for the Continental Commercial Vehicles & Aftermarket Business Unit puts it, “Our KIBES-32 systems will change the way in which bus designers and municipalities think about bus operation and maintenance.”

Two innovative performance features that KIBES-32 provides, which are not available on other diagnostic systems, are centralized diagnostics and information accessibility.

KIBES-32 presents all of the diagnostic data in one central display. This represents a significant advancement over the industry’s current use of LEDs, which can indicate the presence of a failure, but require technicians to open several access points and check multiple nodes to find it. With KIBES-32, the information is instantly accessible and can be configured to meet the specific needs of different departments.

Overall, KIBES-32 can help deliver significant savings in bus design, operation and maintenance. It saves on build and installation costs by replacing conventional wiring, switches, monitors and instruments with a flexible multiplex architecture that can be installed much faster and connects more easily to the vehicle’s components.

The KIBES-32 software system utilizes Windows PC-based PLC programming and is built on an open and scalable product platform, using both off-the-shelf and custom components that can be mounted and configured as needed. The system provides complete design freedom for customizing user menus and information display, and allows for flexibility in meeting specific operational, diagnostic and developmental parameters of bus manufacturers and transit agencies.

KIBES-32 can also deliver operational savings by helping to improve driver behavior and performance. It can be used to encourage better and more efficient driving by eliminating unnecessary idling and helping to reduce speeding and hard braking.

Williams explains that the technologies used to make KIBES-32 a reality are born from the company’s 100-year history in the control and monitoring business and its cohesive partnership with Logena Automotive, the brains behind the system’s innovative software and the development partner responsible for successfully customizing and integrating it into each bus manufacturer’s system.

“Together with Logena, we have combined our expertise and teamed up to successfully apply our technologies for major automotive and truck manufacturers worldwide, as well as the European transit market. Along the way, we have established great ongoing relationships with major vehicle manufacturers around the world. You can’t accomplish that without having superior technology, great products quality manufacturing and good integration,” says Williams.

Williams also notes that these technologies can be readily adapted to the US transit bus market and immediately start delivering the advantages and benefits that are already being enjoyed by other markets.

When Williams talks about the US transit market, he sees the mounting challenges that municipalities are already facing in terms of infrastructure, population growth and transient population. While these problems are just starting to effect American cities, they have already been dealt with in Europe and solved.

Williams explains, “Our KIBES system is a big part of the transit solution in Europe and has become an industry standard. Our systems are installed on a majority of European transit buses. Now, this same proven technology is available in America with the KIBES-32 system, and can put it work for our transit system here.”

NetworkFleet
Networkfleet just celebrated its 10th anniversary last August. The company was founded by Diego Borrego, now the VP of hardware engineering, while he was at MIT in grad school and working at General Motors. Borrego came up with the idea of plugging into the OBD port of a vehicle and getting the diagnostic information.

The Networkfleet 3500 interfaces with the engine computer to quickly provide valuable information to fleet managers when a problem occurs and provides diagnostic summary reports. It can communicate with a variety of vehicle protocols and standards, including CAN, ISO, J-1708 and J-1939.

When a diagnostic trouble code is triggered, an email notification is sent specifying the code and a description of the problem.

“He came up with this concept of a black box that’s underneath the dash. Inside is a GPS module and it has a cellular modem so it can transfer the information. It also plugs into the engine computer,” says Craig Whitney.

If it’s a light-duty vehicle like a car or smaller trucks, these vehicles have an OBD port that the scan tool plugs into, explains Whitney. As for buses and trucks, they have a J1708 to plug into. “Since our device plugs directly into the engine computer, we have the ability to get the diagnostic information.

“Every two minutes it keeps track of where the vehicle is based on the GPS coordinates, how fast the bus is going, how the engine is running; it is pulling all kinds of different engine information out of there.”

He explains, “If you’re driving a car and that wonderful check-engine light comes on, it triggers what’s called a diagnostic trouble code. Whether it’s in a car, big trucks or buses, they all generate these diagnostic trouble codes and they basically give you information about what’s wrong.

“If one of those diagnostic trouble codes gets triggered, it automatically gets sent from the unit back to the Web site, so now the fleet manager or the maintenance manager knows this vehicle has this issue and they’re warned that it may be early indications of a problem.” He stresses, “You know in real time that this is happening.”

Whitney says that with the buses and heavy-duty vehicles, the diagnostic codes have three parts to them that indicate which major system it is. The second piece talks about the module components. “So it may be that the engine is the problem, the subsystem is the coolant and the operational problem is that it’s overheating.” He continues, “It sent you this series of numeric codes that the maintenance manager can translate and understand.”

The other aspect he mentions is that the Networkfleet device monitors odometer reading as well, so maintenance managers can have that information automatically gathered and transmitted. “They know when they need to schedule maintenance,” he says.

As with all systems, he agrees that there’s somewhat of a learning curve, but the system is designed to be easy-to-use. The system integrates into various maintenance management software packages and it’s a relatively easy plug-in. “It just starts feeding more information into it,” Whitney says. “You learn how to run reports and a few other things that really help you to manage your fleets better.”

Bombardier’s Orbiflo and Orbita
Bombardier’s Director, ORBIFLO Program, Mikel Doucet provides information on how ORBIFLO/Orbita provides an innovative and intelligent wayside solution for rail:
Orbita was launched in a pilot project with First ScotRail in the United Kingdom in 2006. The pilot involved monitoring 33 three-car Class 170 Turbostar units. Today, Orbita gathers data from more than 2,900 vehicles across the United Kingdom, Europe and Africa with more than 150 users now regularly logging in to the Orbita solution. Orbita is a service offering composed of people, processes and tools that help identify train service issues before they occur and perform root cause analysis of occurred problems. “It combines data gathered from the trains with Bombardier Transportation’s global fleet knowledge and engineering expertise to enable active, holistic management of vehicle and infrastructure maintenance, performance and operation.”

The tools component used in Orbita is the ORBIFLO software product suite which is an integrated solution that remotely manages operations, passengers, security and maintenance aspects. The ORBIFLO solution is composed of four parts that Doucet explains simply as: obtaining data, transferring the data, storing/managing the data, and accessing/analyzing the data. With the obtained data, it is possible to know precisely the current fleet status in real time for operations purposes. Since the trains-to-wayside communication link is bidirectional, it is also possible to request specific information and perform some remote tasks (e.g. to power-up the train remotely and to update the timetables for the ‘Passenger Information System’).

With the history of collected data, it is possible to automate and alert the users of trends occurring in the train data. Doucet shares that trend analysis enables prevention of in-service failures, increasing reliability and availability of the rolling stock. “On average, 15 percent, evolving to 30 percent with more intelligent vehicles, of failures can be trended and warnings can be issued before an event occurs.”

The ORBIFLO/Orbita solution enables proactive identification of problems Doucet says. It converts data into meaningful information, enabling better maintenance planning. Also, quicker investigation times can significantly reduce operating costs.

For transit agencies, this also allows for maximum fleet utilization and availability, ensuring trains run on time, every time and passengers enjoy a better traveling experience, Doucet says.

Choosing a System
Each of the systems has a passionate force behind it with experience and knowledge to share with agencies. Whitney of NetworkFleet says, “There are a lot of different companies out there that do these kinds of things, so you really need to look at them carefully and understand what they are capable of doing and what they are not capable of doing, how it works, how integrated it is, and how long they’ve been around.

“These are fairly significant investments; you’re going to spend a lot of time and a fair amount of money getting them installed and integrated so you want to make sure the company’s going to be there for the long term.”