By: Thiago Bacic
Vice President, Infrastructure and Services for North America at RADIX
At a recent APTA Rail conference in San Francisco our Radix team kept hearing the question, “what do companies accomplish with digitally integrated asset management practices?” The context of the question deals with transit and transportation leaders discussing in panels, at booths, and in the hallways, the most effective ways to solve for some of the biggest challenges in Rail, Transit and Transportation:
- Revamp infrastructure maintenance and remove upgrade issues with both aging hardware and new requirements, including the need for substantial investment in maintenance and upgrades.
- Mitigating issues that could lead to serious safety concerns or that can improve the experience of transit and transportation of goods or passengers is important.
- Aggregate disparate data and information silos to better manage the design, build, and operation of better and more resilient infrastructure.
- Secure stronger ROI and adoption rates from the integration of new innovations.
At the heart of all these goals is the aspiration of achieving an operational framework through innovations like digital twins and artificial intelligence that delivers a predictive and preventative model for achieving peak performance and efficiency.
“The question is are you going to use the data or waste the data?” remarked Arup Digital Delivery Leader, Jon Berkoe, P.E. on a panel to a full room on the final day of APTA Rail 2025.
The speakers at the event alluded to the ability for digital integration to:
- Drive predictive maintenance, AI-driven analytics, and real-time passenger information systems.
- Empower transportation leaders with the ability to not only improve operational efficiency but also enhance safety and passenger experience.
- Use data effectively, not only to drive collaboration, but more importantly to improve decision-making capabilities.
Secrets for a Successful Digital Twin in Transit and Transportation
Recently I helped a leading, $30-billion-dollar supply chain and logistics company focused on designing and integrating mines, railroads, and ports worldwide integrate into a digital twin that improves overall operational efficiencies.
Specifically, they wanted to:
- Reduce the volume of wheels that were exchanged within their railways system.
- Refine the metrics by which these parts were replaced.
- Achieve real-time visibility into their data, platforms and exchange programs so they can make informed decisions and enhance overall safety and productivity.
- Refresh their “on an hour meter” in a manner that improves safety.
The Radix digital twin and asset performance management solution we designed and implemented:
- Reducing risks by allowing the company to better monitor its systems and achieve the right results. The company needed to cut back on its parts volumes while introducing improved safety checks and metrics, and it was important to build a solution capable of accessing and leveraging data properly.
- Empowered the multinational organization to identify required wheel changes in real time.
- Implementing data models based on the monitoring variables of the locomotives, thereby creating a digital twin that allows for exceptional visibility and control.
Robust savings and optimization
Using the digital twin solution alongside Radix’s asset performance management skillsets, the company quickly saw immense savings. Within the first three months, there were 9.5% savings in wheel maintenance.
This success was supported by Radix leading the installation of a platform which resulted in the implementation of the Passenger Information Management System (PIMS):
- An information waysides solution that increased the adherence to the train wheel exchange schedule at the main inventory center by 20%.
- Reduced the weekly wheel allocations made by the CSE team responsible for Waysides data analysis by 25%.
- Marked reduction in rail failures or disruptions due to wheel faults.
This case study and many like it illustrates how Radix uses a robust roadmap or framework for innovation integration that leverages digital twin with AI integration for companies in transit and transportation for the purposes of:
- Integrating advanced capabilities like real-time tracking, automated systems, and predictive operations, including inventory, and even people flow, and maintenance.
- Collecting data and digitizing train inspection, accident investigation, Purchase Order management and Track allocation.
- Addressing capacity and congestion in a manner that reduces constraints by simulating the operational nuances that add delays, reduce services, and increase operational costs.
- Addressing how digital twins scale new features and innovations more effectively in any asset-intensive environment.
Join me at the 2025 APTAtech conference in Miami, FL from August 3rd to 6th as I showcase these and other results from how Radix is able to drive innovation in transit and transportation.
