The Policy of applying RAMS to evaluate

Railway Signalling Systems for reliable

Transportation

Kazue Yasuoka1 , Atsushi Watabe1 , Tetsunori Hattori2 , and Masayuki

Matsumoto1
1
Electrical & Signal Network Department, East Japan Railway Company,
2-2-2, Yoyogi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
{k-yasuoka,a-watabe,m-matsumoto}@jreast.co.jp
2
Railway International Standards Center, Railway Technical Research Institute,
2-2-2 Yoyogi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
hattori@rtri.or.jp

Abstract. This paper describes how we adopted RAMS [1] [2] for
railway signalling system management. We wanted to use this stan-
dard to railway signalling system to improve performance, mainte-
nance and reduce failures. We evaluate railway signaling system by a
parameter, and the parameter that shows the customer impact level
from a railway signalling equipment system down is selected for eval-
uating reliability and the risks are analyzed. Then certain problems
became clear and countermeasures examined, some of which were
improved.

Keywords: RAMS, Signalling System, Reliability Management

1 Introduction
Some railway signalling equipments, such as signals and switch machine, is
installed on the site. Other systems, such as interlocking systems, are located
indoors. This equipment should be maintained regularly but if failure occurs
with these devices, it is necessary to try to find the cause and repair it as
quickly as possible. On the other, essential parts from equipment design to
end of service life are written in the RAMS standard enacted in 2002.
In this paper, we examined the way of RAMS in railway signalling sys-
tems because we wanted to use this standard to achieve better performance,
improvement of maintenance and reduction of failure.

2 About East Japan Railway Company

East Japan Railway Company [3] became a share-holding company and is
one of the seven railway companies formed on April 1st, 1987, following the
E. Schnieder, G. Tarnai (eds.), FORMS/FORMAT 2010,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-14261-1_6, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
56 K. Yasuoka, A. Watabe, T. Hattori, M. Matsumoto

division and privatization of the Japanese National Railways. In October

1993, the company placed its shares on the stock market.
There are 1,705 stations on our 7,527 kilometers network in eastern Hon-
shu, including the Tokyo metropolitan area, and the company serves more
than 16 million passengers daily.
Among the many lines operated by JR East, the Shinkansen and Tokyo
Metropolitan Area lines have require higher-density, safety and reliability.

Fig. 1. Area served by East Japan Railway Company

3 Evaluation of current railway signalling system by

RAMS

3.1 What is RAMS?

RAMS (Railway applications - specification and demonstration of reliability,

availability, maintainability and safety) standard is the technology for evalu-