Stadler Rail

Stadler Rail is committed to sustainability and environmental protection, for example by focussing on modern production techniques and the development of energy-efficient vehicles. The company has an impeccable reputation in the industry. This is partly due to the highest standards in production, manufacturing, quality control and service.

It is therefore a particular concern of Stadler Rail to constantly optimise its products, processes and working methods. Quality inspections of all types of rail vehicles are carried out individually for each vehicle type by qualified specialists before each delivery. This inspection of all system and safety-relevant components and functions is essential for the smoothest possible operation.

With the expansion of production and services, Stadler Rail was increasingly confronted with a shortage of qualified specialists to inspect the vehicles. The question arose: How can the experts be supported in inspecting the vehicles and preparing the inspection reports in such a way that the processing time per order is reduced and the outputs can be processed quickly and seamlessly?

The mobile app «Stadler Rail Inspection App»  facilitates the inspection of rail vehicles.
The application has reduced the average processing time per inspection by 30%. Thanks to the digitalisation and automation of the inspection process, the technical experts can concentrate on their actual core competence and make their important contribution to the quality and functionality of Stadler Rail’s solutions.

Solution

In order to be able to carry out the quality inspection standards at the usual level and meet the delivery deadlines, Stadler Rail has developed a concept for the digitalisation and automation of this business process together with soxes.

The solution, which was customised for Stadler, takes all requirements into account:

• Integration of various interfaces in the backend so that data relevant to the inspection, such as the key data per order, scope of delivery, advance steps, etc., can be displayed.
• Digitalisation of all system and safety-relevant aspects for the inspection of rail vehicles
• Upload option and assignment of images to visualise defects.
• Integration of an intelligent speech-to-text function with which the technical experts document each inspection. The recordings are automatically summarised in an inspection report.
• Once the inspection is complete, the inspection report is automatically sent to the team of technicians and filed.

As the experts inspect the rail vehicles from the inside and outside, a mobile solution was needed. To meet the high safety requirements, the application was developed as a native app for Android devices.

The results

Since 2021, the app has been used on a daily basis to inspect rail vehicles at Stadler Rail’s plants around the world.

The software solution was originally developed specifically for the head office. Due to the positive results in the application, soxes and Stadler Rail are currently in the process of adapting the app for other process steps. Furthermore, soxes is supporting Stadler Rail in several other projects for the digitalisation and automation of business processes.