What Netflix has to do with Predictive Maintenance

Let’s travel back in time for a bit — back to a time when Blockbuster was still in every neighborhood. You would walk in and see hundreds, if not thousands, of different movies to choose from. Unless you were going there for a specific movie, it was challenging to sift through all the different options, read the back of all the covers and finally walk away with a single movie. Sometimes, the process took so long that you walked away with multiple movies — only to have to decide when you got home which movie you were going to watch first.

What does this have to do with transit, you ask? New technologies are always being discovered and, while they may take time to garner popularity within society, if the technology is good enough, it will result in changing the future landscape. For home video, it was Netflix. For music, it was being able to transfer files digitally (see Napster or iTunes). Predictive maintenance is an evolved approach that can change the way transit systems operate.

Reactive

Going into a rental place without a movie in mind is the reactive method on deciding which movie you’re going to rent. This relates to the old days of waiting for a vehicle (or part) to break down before you decided to replace it. Waiting for a part to break down doesn’t make sense to anyone anymore and this system is not regularly practiced.

This obviously caused issues with passenger satisfaction if a vehicle happened to breakdown in the middle of service. It disrupted the route and caused delays, which is costly. Interruptions have many costs associated with them: sending someone to fix or tow the broken vehicle, less effective operations of your assets, potential loss in revenue if riders decide to choose different travel options, and the potential cost if someone was injured due to an unsafe vehicle.

All of the above reasons are why, in 2010, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) published a paper on why preventative maintenance was the best way to maintain your fleet’s assets during that time.

Preventative

Going into the video rental store with an idea of the movie you would like to watch would help speed up the process. But what happened if the video you want is already rented out? Or if something else distracted you and caused a Sophie’s choice?

This is similar to the preventative maintenance approach — something unexpected is bound to happen. But you can always prepare and try to stay ahead of the situation. Fixing potential issues before they happen prolongs the time between major delays because of an unforeseen breakdown.

Planned inspections would catch any glaring issues. But, the only problem with this is that you would have to rely on an industry (or part) average to make sure you were keeping on top of these fixes. The research from TCRP’s report revealed this resulted in inspections occurring every 2000-6000 miles. This pushed us further down the road on making sure operations ran smoothly, proactively taking care of assets.

Turning the corner on an old, worn out system renewed the ability for agencies to ensure buses were on time. Anytime you can provide on-time transport, passenger satisfaction increases. It would cost tax payers and your agency less money on investments because you could get a longer life out of your assets. And in the long run, better assets means safety.

How much better can it get than that, right? Well, just ask Blockbuster what they think of Netflix … oh wait, you can’t.

Predictive

Netflix changed the game — it made it so you didn’t even have to leave your home to rent a movie. But, they also changed the way we think about what we’ll watch. They use predictive analytics, based off the previous things you’ve watched, and suggest movies that you are going to enjoy. Now, instead of going into the store and having all the information to sift through, Netflix does all that work for you and picks the movie it thinks you’ll like best. (And in my case, it’s usually pretty spot on.)

Predictive maintenance does the same thing in transit. It can tell you the optimal time to repair something, or that there is an issue that needs to be looked into further. Basically, it helps streamline, prolong, and vastly improve the process of your operations. And just like Netflix, these technologies can automatically predict maintenance and doesn’t require as many checks since this new approach does them for you.

In the case of Metro St. Louis, they were able to change their mean-time between failure (MTBF) from 4,000 miles to more than 22,000 miles. By proactively keeping their equipment in top shape, they were able to prevent accidents from asset failure, improve passenger experience and reduce operating costs.

Less downtime means more operating hours, resulting in better efficiencies. Not only that, but predicting when components fail and fixing the problem before it happens will prolong the use of your assets. At Metro, the average lifecycle of their vehicles went from 12 to 15 years. So, now your operations are running more efficiently and you get extra life from your assets. The cost savings are massive — $2.4 million worth in annual savings massive, all because of improved operations.

Why Transit Needs It

Digital files were a game changer. Netflix was a game changer. And predictive maintenance is a game changer for public transit. Let technology do the heavy lifting. Predictive maintenance will put something in your queue and you can sit back and stop wasting your time trying to pick the most efficient process – so that you can go home early and get started on binge watching Netflix.