EMD partners with Uptake on locomotive analytics
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-ChiefElectro-Motive Diesel, Inc. (EMD), a subsidiary of Progress Rail Services Corp. (a Caterpillar company), and Uptake, described as “a provider of a dynamic analytics and insight platform for a wide array of industries,” have been working together since 2014 to develop what they call “an intelligent rail analytics platform” and plan to begin piloting with select customers in the coming months.
Uptake’s work with EMD began with a refresh of the IntelliTrain™ locomotive monitoring and prescriptive repair application. “The enhanced application—IntelliTraine—combines cutting edge data analytics, machine learning, and predictive failure prevention, shifting from time-based maintenance to condition-based IntelliMaintenance,” EMD said. “This shift in maintenance practice—to changing components before failure—has the potential to save customers in the rail industry meaningful expenses. Additionally, the user interface has been updated, improving the look, ease of use, and functionality of the application.
Billy Ainsworth, President and CEO of Progress Rail and EMD, said, “As a rail original equipment manufacturer, we believe by providing technology to improve the reliability and utilization of the assets we produce and help maintain, we can significantly reduce our customers’ maintenance expenditures and improve their revenue and service capability to their valued customers. The combination of Progress Rail and EMD, with more than 90 years serving the rail industry, coupled with the speed and entrepreneurship of Uptake, provides the perfect relationship to deliver customer value in the mega data space.”
“EMD is a leader in the locomotive space and other rail related products and services for the rail industry, and we have been able to leverage their deep expertise into our predictive analytics and integrated workflow platform,” added Brad Keywell, Co-Founder and CEO of Uptake. “Our goal is to provide all railroads globally a comprehensive solution that is simple to use that will minimize, and eventually eliminate, unplanned downtime, while at the same time optimizing performance, therefore increasing profitability.”
EMD said IntelliTraine “is only the beginning of a suite of applications being built by Uptake to tackle some of the most challenging problems facing the rail industry. There is significant data available across the Caterpillar rail product and service portfolio. A common user interface experience and analytics platform across the rail industry will extract incremental value and deliver efficiency and productivity to global customers.”
Prior to this announcement, Caterpillar Inc. announced a broad agreement with Uptake to develop “an enterprise wide, end-to-end analytics platform for predictive diagnostics to help Caterpillar customers monitor and optimize their fleets more effectively.”
