Signalling power supplies into Victoria Station

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that. Yes, this exactly the sort of common mode failure that gives us nightmares. (I spend my life, and indeed spent many hours this morning, saying "yes I know it's very unlikely, but what would happen if it did, and what could you do to stop it?" Followed by going back to the end customer to see if they can afford the more robust solution...)


You have summed up the rail market very well...the secret is to supply to the UK first, and then use that certification to gain entry to the world wide market. Other than (in my experience) Russia, the UK is usually the toughest market to get into because of the most rigorous standards, hence if you can achieve that you can achieve anything. And of course be prepared to supply bespoke equipment to military levels of robustness and reliability for the price you'd usually sell off-the-shelf commercial equipment


Innovation (product development) is possible, and when you do it well it is popular for precisely the reasons of continuous improvement we're discussing, but it does take a very serious management approach to be successful. Personally I enjoy that process, handled well it makes you produce very well engineered designs, but it drives many innovation managers completely mad!!  


Incidentally, my often expressed personal view is that one of the biggest technical challenges and opportunities facing the UK Rail Network is accelerating the widespread roll-out of condition monitoring infrastructure (although I wouldn't like to say whether it would have helped in this case). This issue has been rumbling on for years - a very large proportion of system outages are detectable in the early stages, the problem is the cost of the infrastructure to effectively monitor and react to them. It's a phenomenally complicated issue - for years the IET ran two day conferences just on condition monitoring in rail - with no simple solutions (or more accurately they've already been done) but lots of opportunities.


Cheers,


Andy

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that. Yes, this exactly the sort of common mode failure that gives us nightmares. (I spend my life, and indeed spent many hours this morning, saying "yes I know it's very unlikely, but what would happen if it did, and what could you do to stop it?" Followed by going back to the end customer to see if they can afford the more robust solution...)


You have summed up the rail market very well...the secret is to supply to the UK first, and then use that certification to gain entry to the world wide market. Other than (in my experience) Russia, the UK is usually the toughest market to get into because of the most rigorous standards, hence if you can achieve that you can achieve anything. And of course be prepared to supply bespoke equipment to military levels of robustness and reliability for the price you'd usually sell off-the-shelf commercial equipment


Innovation (product development) is possible, and when you do it well it is popular for precisely the reasons of continuous improvement we're discussing, but it does take a very serious management approach to be successful. Personally I enjoy that process, handled well it makes you produce very well engineered designs, but it drives many innovation managers completely mad!!  


Incidentally, my often expressed personal view is that one of the biggest technical challenges and opportunities facing the UK Rail Network is accelerating the widespread roll-out of condition monitoring infrastructure (although I wouldn't like to say whether it would have helped in this case). This issue has been rumbling on for years - a very large proportion of system outages are detectable in the early stages, the problem is the cost of the infrastructure to effectively monitor and react to them. It's a phenomenally complicated issue - for years the IET ran two day conferences just on condition monitoring in rail - with no simple solutions (or more accurately they've already been done) but lots of opportunities.


Cheers,


Andy