• coupling
• DB
• maintenance
• MRO
• railway company
• sequencing rules
• Tecnomatix Plant Simulation

The thesis, with the assistance of an event-driven simulation model, analyzes the MRO process of train couplings (Deutsche Bahn). The model is a virtual copy of the real case scenario. Couplings are expensive because of their high entanglement and high amount of single parts. Because of the uncertainty of their condition, it is laborious to plan and to control maintenance. The main goal, of the thesis, is to use the event-driven simulation model to re-create and to investigate different scenarios, without interrupting the real process. Subsequently to the state of the art, the description of the coupling’s types (ICE1, VT642 and ICE3) and the explanation of the model, the dissertation examines, in depth, the process’ weak points. Afterwards, a sensitive analysis is conducted to verify the potentiality.
The contribution of this thesis concerns the focusing of the stations that create bottlenecks or hold back the optimization of the process. In conclusion, strategies to improve the couplings’ MRO procedure are derived and an outlook for future researches is drafted.