(02-05-2016, 05:09 PM)dorothy.pipet Wrote: Another attempt for comments please
2007 Mod 1 Q4 DAP
Part i)
basically sound in that there are 5 valid points, but some of these might have been better made in part ii), so need to differentiate a bit more between the client and supplier and make some other points that are unique from the railway’s perspective in order to leave yourself some ammunition for use from the supplier’s viewpoint.
More than just knowing that the product has been accepted elsewhere, there is the comfort that the fundamental product not only exists but it is capable of working; this distinguishes it from promised products which may be further away from application than the supplier may have indicated- “vapourware”!
Indeed there should be some solid evidence of a real product which as actually been in service for a period within a real environment; it is true that this is probably far from identical and that the product itself may have needed to be significantly changed so that it is suitable to the new environment of the Railway Administration seeking to import it, but it is still rather better evidence than from modelling and purely theoretical studies.
Most important it has escaped the cosseted world of an R&D department, which may have rather unrealistic expectations about how users utilise and maintainers service it and the RA can seek the views and data from their fellow client about the “real world” behaviour and performance.
Most of the Safety Approval costs are now in the UK met by the supplier and NR charges them to support the activity. Clearly keeping costs down is within the railway’s interest as sooner or later one can expect the supplier to attempt to re-coup one way or the other, but there is only a loose relationship between “selling price” and “cost” as it is also heavily influenced by competition and supplier’s ambition to break into a market hoping for more long term financial reward than short term profit. A large railway organisation is in fact “a many headed monster” and the different elements often pull in opposing directions, so when dealing with any facet it is often very focussed on its own perspective and not necessarily behaving in a manner most appropriate overall to the stated company objectives!
I’d argue that the main advantage to the railway is the shorter time, rather than the lower cost. Almost certainly the product is being introduced under the auspices of a particular project and these tend to have commissioning dates set and have their own momentum and aspirations. There is currently a specific project whose main rationale for existence is the pilot application of a replacement TFM for SSI, yet the Project Manager is complaining that he doesn’t want any product that currently doesn’t have full product approval utilised- someone has completely lost the plot! However it is not unknown- just look at the pilot projects for Invensys and SSL Modular Signalling and how both suffered by attempts in the delivery phase to make them into conventional projects where the need to commission dominated their fundamental purpose at trailing new products and processes.
Hence from a railway’s viewpoint, I would suggest main motivators are:
- Less development risk
- Actual data rather than just modelling
- Validation of design assumptions in a real world environment
- Ability to seek the views of a fellow railway
- Shorter timescale for acceptance
To avoid the impression that may inadvertently be given that the process is easy, I think that I would add a caveat that “the devil is in the detail” and there are real problems sometimes in getting information that enables a true comparison between “original product in its native environment” and the “in-process-of-modification product and its new environment”; there are lots of unstated assumptions and neither railway may actually be able to fully characterise their environment which makes determining the significance of the difference between them somewhat problematic.
Part ii).
I do agree that many of the items of benefit to one are also of benefit to the other. The lower costs and the confidence which comes from having got a similar product in service with a track record are certainly the most beneficial to the supplier. It is certainly easier when defending a product against the probing (and it has to be said often rather “picky”) comments of a safety assessor to be able to counter with an argument that, although expressed rather differently, basically means “get real and smell the coffee- what makes you judge and jury in this; that is a very obscure scenario which is just not seen as a problem by those who actually have boots on ballast experience!”
You were right also to focus upon the prospect of getting more orders more quickly as that helps get the cash flow from sales which repays the development and safety approval costs sooner; also the “ratchet effect” of gaining approval in another market can help for the next time.
Part iii).
This seems to cover the main points well; the things I’d add are:
the difficulty in obtaining enough information to be able to characterise the original environment (partly technically, but far more difficult the processes, human culture and therefore a host of invisible assumptions)
the language utilised- not so much meaning the translation into English from another tongue but of the actual meaning of terms.
- For example when the UK considers delay minutes it means the aggregate of all the knock-on impact of a failure, whereas in other countries it can mean only the immediate delay to the first train involved. Hence the numbers obtained do not mean what they might be expected to mean and this might not even be recognised, but even if it is there is no way that one metric can be readily unequivocally translated into another.
- A lot of trouble can arise from US English into UK English; the term “signaller” in the US means the maintenance technician whereas the person setting the routes is known as the dispatcher, so confusion can arise. All sorts of misunderstandings can arise; for example the colloquialism for a slippage of project dates is in the UK “the programme has gone to the right” whereas the Americans see this as “slipping left”- depends whether the one moves one’s eyes over the paper from left to right or one is always looking at the same place and moving the paper relative to that viewpoint. This happens all the time; if a Frenchman places items in priority order 1-3, then their preferred option is item 3 on the basis that it is the highest number which from the UK seems completely counter-intuitive.
- the unstated and invisible assumption. In Europe many of the activities which from a UK perspective we’d expect the maintainer to perform are instead undertaken by the equivalent of the signaller. We have become used to signallers rather than technicians undertaking axle counter reset-restore, but still expect route bars etc. to be undertaken only by the technicians. This expectation can impose unexpected requirements onto VDU control systems from the supplier’s perspective and the alterations to accomplish this can actually be quite deep and far reaching involving major changes. Similarly when SIMIS-W was imported into the UK this uncovered at a very late stage that within the core system this equated “signal at danger” with “signal at red”. It was only when the Principles testing revealed that a “Right Away” indication was not being given when a train was being routed to sidings (which on the face of it was a pretty minor observation) that it was then realized that the core product (i.e. the level within the sell which should have been the specific railway customisation to deliver its signaling principles) needed to be altered in quite a fundamental way; a signal at red plus PL is a proceed aspect in the UK but this was just not anticipated by the original product designers because to them a signal at red was a signal at danger and therefore it was just impossible to get the interlocking to display an RA indication without some drastic alterations at the heart of the system.....
part iv).
This was rather short for the 8 marks. I am somewhat struggling to add much though- this is not really my area of knowledge either....
I think chosing to cross-accept those products used in as similar as possible a way from as similar as possible native environment is a good start.
I also think that cross acceptance from Europe is far easier than trying to do so from India, China or even Japan; it is not only the more common environment but the whole "culture" thing and the greater degree of confidence (founded or not!) that there is likely to be.
Also the more of the word that adopts the EN 50126/8/9 series of standards and products come along that have actually been developed from first principles to them (rather than being sprayed on retrospectively to a product that owes quite a lot to legacy) also helps.
Mention the Interoperable Constituents of ETCS that should mean that even cross-acceptance should not be necessary; if there is a common industry spec across the EU then once a product has been demonstrated to meet the criteria in one member state then no further product approval is required (or even lawful) in another. of course there are the national Technical Rules so in reality there is also likely to be some need to make sure that these are addressed, but certainly reduces scope drastically.
