Metrix helps Keep Oyster moving - case study from Rail Technology Magazine

Keeping the Oyster card scheme moving is vital for ensuring millions of Londoners reach their destinations each day. With so many factors involved, a service management system capable of dealing with multiple disciplines is essential.

Oyster, the integrated ticketing system run by Transport for London, has revolutionised travel in the English capital. Since the scheme was introduced in 2003, 16 million Oyster cards have been issued, with 7.6 million journeys per day now made using the pre-payment system.

Passenger numbers on the London underground are increasing every year, with a record four-week period at the end of 2007 seeing 90 million journeys made. Central to the success of Oyster is the successful upkeep of the infrastructure, which is handled by Surrey-based Cubic Transportation Systems Ltd, a supplier of fully integrated ticketing and revenue collecting systems for numerous train operating companies throughout the UK and around the world.

The contract with Transport for London covers around 16,000 assets - gates, station ticket machines, bus ticket machines and retail terminals for card sales - each of which consists of up to 20 core components subject to maintenance / repairs / upgrade activities and can require return to base for repair. Cubic has an extensive field force of service engineers working mixed shifts offering a 24-7-365 service. Backing up the field work are numerous support staff working across the call centre, contracts department, logistics / stores, product and technical support, and repair centre.

In 2002, Cubic implemented the Metrix service management solution as a replacement for its in-house solution. Mike Gosling, CTSL systems analyst explains why it was time for a replacement. “Our solution at the time was highly inflexible and brought with it a high IT overhead. There was no single asset database and data retrieval was very difficult. It was crucial that we implemented a solution that seamlessly integrated all the different elements of our business – call handling, field service, repair centre logistics, etc., to give the business a backbone going forward and the flexibility to cope with the changing demands within the industry.” Mike continues by summarising how the system has changed working practices. “Using Metrix has given us a real handle on the loop totals. We have absolute visibility of urgency allowing us to predict what repairs will be required and thus prioritise those repairs in the workshop.” Not only have operations improved, but the IT overhead has now halved thanks to the introduction of the more efficient Metrix solution.

Tracking assets is a challenge, but CTSL turned the problem on its head by letting the assets do the work for them. For example, CTSL’s card sales retail terminals are often moved from location to location. When the retail terminal is moved, one of the first pieces of information it sends back is the new location. That information is picked up by the XML interface to Metrix, updating its current location. Any new call against that piece of equipment will thereafter always be associated with the correct location. Additionally, Metrix tracks all of the asset movements, when and where installations occurred, and all associated service history including back to base repairs. “Having a solution that manages our assets down to such a level of detail means our partners can benefit directly,” says Gosling. “For instance, we have supplied some of our customers with a performance wall board with a direct feed from Metrix. This gives them a real time view of the infrastructure and performance levels of the assets covered by the contract. We can also deploy a web portal to customers so that they can organise and schedule commissioning of equipment themselves and review the status of ongoing work – it is a genuine partnership approach.”

With such a large fleet of engineers, it is often difficult to ensure that the same repair procedures are being followed and, traditionally, users have an in-depth knowledge of these processes. This is no longer the case with Metrix, as Gosling details: “We now use the workflow engine in Metrix to streamline the whole process. Metrix generates tasks based on our own workflow rules. Each contract can have its own workflow linking common tasks together in many business processes to best meet the SLAs. This means our teams can focus on completing the individual tasks that they own and manage rather than trawling through documentation to understand the big picture.”

The end result of this streamlining is that CTSL has been able to take on more contracts without any significant increase in headcount. CTSL uses the Cognos reporting tool to ensure all users have access, via CTSL’s intranet, to real time reports that can be configured “on the fly.” Behind those reports Cubic has also created a database that performs complex calculations regarding uptime and asset performance and posts that information ready for users to access in their own day-to-day performance reports, significantly reducing the time taken for data retrieval. Also available to CTSL are wallboards and user screens that detail real-time contractual performance information and escalations to ensure the highest level of operational visibility. Users can drill down through the escalation screen into the individual corrective maintenance jobs and review the full repair history of the device as well as the full details of the repair including engineer allocation, parts required, parts used and the engineers’ activity codes.

Following the successful implementation of Metrix in 2002, Metrix was also implemented by Cubic Transportation Systems in Australia, Sweden and the USA which has included the rollout of Metrix’s mobile data solution for engineers (Metrix Mobile).

To view the article as published in RTA magazine please use the link below:
http://www.railtechnologymagazine.com/dataview/News/News_Article.aspx?KeyValue=1248