Cartridge tapered roller bearing of rail bogies overhauling process optimization by using ARENA simulation

Indian railways invest thousands of crores in maintenance of the bogies, where one such periodic overhauling (POH) is performed at Carriage and Wagon works in Perambur, Chennai. Several shops undertake maintenance duties of the Wagon and carriage separately. In the wagon section, where goods carrying bogies were periodically overhauled after every 18 months. Under the Cartridge Tapered Roller Bearing (CTRB) section, the bearings were subjected to maintenance and condemned if any cracks were observed. Several processes were used in the periodic overhauling that involve related timings for every step. The data was collected during the industrial visit where a small tour into the wagon section was followed by a detailed process explanation of the cleaning and maintenance of the Cartridge Tapered Roller Bearing. In this paper we aim to study the original time to the one optimized using modelling and simulation methodologies on ARENA to stage a refined process flow for the periodic overhauling of cartridge tapered roller bearing.