CONTEXT

During the Six Sigma improvement programme, the project leader had a requirement to perform experimentation to understand the performance of switches and crossings and point operating equipment under varied environmental conditions. There was a need to accurately recreate the effects of rainfall, sun and contamination on point operation and the team needed ideas to be able to overcome the roadblock. CHG worked collaboratively with the client to analyse the process, identify specifications and develop requirements, developing the characteristics of the system based on weather data, the need to automate point operation and collect statistically proven data on swing-time and weather parameters. 

The system we rapid-prototyped, and subsequently built, accurately recreated rainfall to Environment Agency specifications for pressure, flow and droplet size; recreated solar heating with a PID loop around ambient and contact temperatures; provided laboratory-graded contamination and automated the operation of the points around the duty-cycle of the point operating equipment, all done below budget and in a matter of weeks to get the project back on track.

The system automated control of the points to provide thousands of automatic operations, collected swing-time and environmental conditions to a proven repeatability and reproducibility measure, allowed the users to configure the environmental conditions to produce and provided the project team with the necessary data to be able to identify the root-causes of point failure.  The system was specified, developed, prototyped and put into service within weeks of the original enquiry being received, demonstrating CHG’s innovative, rapid prototyping and development services to full effect.