Cross acceptance Q&A

[abcd]

I have tried to answer a question of cross acceptance. Please review and suggest the modifications.

[abcd]

I have tried to answer a question of cross acceptance. Please review and suggest the modifications.

[PJW]

I have tried to answer a question of cross acceptance. Please review and suggest the modifications.

I seem to see 2 copies of shts  3 & 4 but no shts 1&2 in the pdf

[abcd]

I have tried to answer a question of cross acceptance. Please review and suggest the modifications.

I seem to see 2 copies of shts  3 & 4 but no shts 1&2 in the pdf

Attached now the sheets 1,2 & 3,4.

[PJW]

I have tried to answer a question of cross acceptance. Please review and suggest the modifications.

I seem to see 2 copies of shts  3 & 4 but no shts 1&2 in the pdf

Attached now the sheets 1,2 & 3,4.

Railway administrations are keen to ensure that new materials and products introduced into signalling and telecommunications systems are safe and reliable and meet required standards.

i) Describe how cross-acceptance of products already in use elsewhere may be beneficial to the railway administration. [5 marks]

OK.  Also if it has been in use for some time elsewhere, then arguably better evidence than just done in a factory / simulation, because has been in use for real in what may be a pretty comparable environment.  Depending on the contractual context though, the cost & efforts saved are probably to the advantage of the SUPPLIER.  The railway will however gain from the quicker time to implement, the greater certainty that timescales will not extend and perhaps less disruption than if the early equipment trials were on its network.  There is also perhaps the hope that the supplier might pass on some of the benefits of the lower implementation cost to the railway.
Although the question is about BENEFITS only, I do think you were right to put a caveat (after all, the question also says MAY); I'd have put stronger in that there would ALWAYS need to be review that the environments were truly sufficiently similar to be sure that not only would the equipment perform adequately in the new environment but that not affect anything that already exists in the environment in which it is the newcomer.

---

ii) How may cross-acceptance be beneficial to a supplier? [5 marks]

Think the wording of b) could be better.  Ideally identical project would be used by the various different railways; some of the economies of scale are lost if there are a range of variants (although if there can be one product with just a selection of configuration options then there can still be much synergy).
I am not sure the basis on which ETCS will be used in India; within Europe it is not strictly cross-acceptance; subtly different since there is a common specification and once any constituent has been demonstrated to meet the requirements in one member state then it automatically gets accepted status in another.  It may well be that a form of cross-acceptance is applicable for use elsewhere than an EU member state.

---

iii) What are the barriers to cross-acceptance? [7 marks]

Certainly the credibility in the new country of the body which undertook the original assessment is fundamental. 
I couldn't quite read all of item b) but certainly one of the major problems is actually being able to establish the characteristics of both the native environment (not only for EMC) in which the product was assessed and has a history of use and that of the new environment; they are never going to be the same but it can be difficult to know whether the difference identified are actually significant.  It can also be very easy to find that the metrics used are some what different and often not "comparing apples with apples"- for example when NR counts "train delay minutes" it means the total of the train being delayed by the failure and all the knock-on that occurs to other traffic as a consequence, whereas many continental railways only consider the immediately affected trains so the "language" does not equate and can't readily be converted. Similarly  statistics about point failures very seldom reflect the failure of the point machine itself to operate but tend to reflect the failure to achieve detection after being requested to move and therefore very much relate to the P'Way, the traffic, the maintenance regime and only in a minor way the actual machine itself supposedly being considered.  Hence in reality, it is nothing like as straightforward as may at first appear; much room for opinion, argument and debate!
As you rightly say, much also depend upon the skills, training and experience of staff and this can be affected by history, culture etc. so there can be a whole host of unrecorded and even unrecognised basic assumptions in one environment that just don't transfer to the new one.

---

iv) How may these barriers be reduced or overcome? [8 marks]

The most marks for this part as it is the hardest; I wish I knew the answer and I think the examiners were also looking for some good ideas......

I think you have generally interpreted the question as meaning "how can the product still be introduced into the new environment, despite issues identified during the cross-acceptance process?" and you certainly have some answers to that. 

I interpreted the question more as "how can the cross-acceptance process itself be made more effective?"

Your last point certainly addresses that element since one of the difficulties faced in cross-accepting an established product is that its native environment it generally evolved from a predecessor and things get lost in the mists of time and before such a formal approach to capturing requirements was undertaken, and therefore when trying to cross-accept into its new environment much of the source material one would wish to refer to just does not exist.  It is certainly much easier when the whole concept and development has been undertaken in a modern form to a common standard (of course the ENxxxxx standards are certainly not "universal" but formally just European (although I think there is quite a lot of Asia who choose to adopt); it does seem that there can be great difficulty in getting companies from the USA to recognise, let alone to work to, them even having signed a contract for a project for which they are contractual conditions!

I certainly would have difficulty in writing enough for the last section based on my interpretation of the question, but I would go on to talk about the importance of the product supplier getting a good understanding of the environment (technical system, physical, electrical, human, cultural) in which seeking to deploy coupled with the railway that wishes to adopt forging links with their counterpart which already uses the product to allow better communication and proper appreciation of similarities and differences.  Some of your items could be reworded a bit to fit in to this framework as illustrations of some of the potential problem areas that might be flushed out during this.

It may be however that your interpretation of the question was actually what the examiners intended, though I feel that if they had it would have been worded more like:

How can barriers to the cross acceptance of a product be overcome?

Interested to see what others feel about what was meant by the examiners