Generating Value from Whole-Life Solutions – A New Opportunity for the UK Rail Industry

The UK government has started to demand a “whole-life, whole-system” view of new contracts within the UK rail industry; requiring the industry to transform the way it does business in order to deliver this new paradigm. This paper describes the work of a collaborative academic industry research project; based in one railway vehicle manufacturing company. The aim of the project is to maximise benefit across the value chain throughout the whole-life of a fleet of railway vehicles. This paper presents preliminary results and a review of the relevant literature to discuss how the traditional approach to value generation must change in order to deliver whole-life solutions. The discussion describes how an organisation’s structure, approach to contracting and spares provisioning, supplier and customer relationships and people issues (behaviours and cultures) significantly impact upon the ability to deliver value to the manufacturer, their customers and suppliers in whole-life service contracts.