Gotthard Base Tunnel
The Gotthard Base Tunnel (57 km) is central to the Rotterdam-Genoa freight corridor. The “GBT data integration” project will ensure that SBB trains can continue to use the tunnel in the future.
The Swiss Federal Railways – “Schweizerischen Bundesbahnen” (SBB) is the backbone of public transport in Switzerland and is one of Europe’s leading railway companies. Over one million passengers use their reliable, punctual and high-quality services every day.
A special feature of SBB is the seamless integration of all modes of transport – from train and bus to boat and urban transport.
Thanks to state-of-the-art technologies and AI-supported solutions, SBB optimises its infrastructure and maintenance, while positioning itself as a pioneer of sustainable mobility with almost 100% renewable energy.
High service quality, technological excellence and consistent customer focus make SBB the leading mobility service provider in Switzerland and an international benchmark.
In contrast to many other tunnels of approximately the same length – such as the Eurotunnel – the GBT does not have a service tunnel running parallel to the operating tube. This requires a particularly high degree of planning of maintenance activities in the tunnel in order to minimise the impact on operations. Planning is carried out with the help of SAP. The individual maintenance requirements are transferred to the central planning centre in the form of SAP orders.
For centralised planning, particular attention is paid to the resources required to carry out maintenance. Very high demands are placed on the master data in order to be able to generate the orders with as little manual effort as possible but with a high level of detail in line with the principle of “industrial maintenance”. This “GBT data integration” project therefore focussed on all measures for complete and correct mapping of all maintenance-relevant master data in the SAP system. Special priority was given to the plant data, which defines location and access, as well as the maintenance instructions (work plans), which map the resources required for the individual activities.
With its logistical framework conditions, the GBT is the first section of the SBB network whose maintenance is planned centrally. In a heterogeneous system landscape and non-integrated processes, this means a change in working methods for all departments, as they carry out their planning in isolation outside the GBT. In order to be able to define the processes correctly, expertise about the system to be used and its functions was built up across departments during the course of the project. Depending on the newly developed processes, the master data is characterised differently.
The specialist departments were prepared for the use of the SAP module SAP EAM with the central planning for the GBT. Previously, the SAP system was not used or not used in the intended form. The existing specialist organisations and processes were aligned with the existing IT systems in order to avoid system adjustments or any compromise solutions. In the course of the “GBT data integration” project, the users / superusers were trained in the processes and their special features as well as system utilisation.
0
Project duration (years)
0
Core team
9
Number of people in the specialist area
707
Technical pitches
32
Equipments
25
Service products
13
Workplaces
42
Work schedules
509
Maintenance schedules
In order to ensure centralised planning, a uniform view of the installations is required. With the Swiss-wide mapping logic of the operating points (geographical orientation points), it is not possible to visualise a system in the tunnel with sufficient local precision. A zone concept was therefore developed to divide the GBT into individual zones. This guarantees the user an overview of the structure of the objects in SAP EAM, which installations are located in the same place (zone) within the tunnel.
In order to comply with this zone concept in SAP, changes had to be made to the existing interface to DfA. The project team worked out these requirements, supported the implementation and tested the results. As the GBT-specific information cannot be transferred via the Switzerland-wide interface, data was regularly synchronised during the migration phase and GBT-specific attributes were maintained directly in SAP. A concept was drawn up for the future automatic processing of this information in SAP and its implementation was supervised.
In future, the system data for some departments will be managed in Maximo. The interface required for this was designed and implemented during the “GBT data integration” project. This data was required for trial operation before the interface went live in SAP. The synchronisation of the data was ensured via an enrichment database (DAE), which enables the source data to be uploaded to both systems.
In order to map the complex requirements of shift planning and logistics that go beyond the standard options, SBB IT has realised various additional SAP developments.
The impact on the master data was checked for feasibility and processed in close collaboration as part of the implementation of these developments.
On completion of the project, all available master data in SAP EAM was migrated. All measures have been taken to ensure that the data quality remains at the level required for planning the maintenance of the GBT in the long term. The data structures defined in this project also serve as the basis for the Ceneri Base Tunnel. The commissioning of this tunnel is planned for 2020.
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