Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Matthew Jenner and
Peter Mitchinson of Atlas Copco about its innovative
equipment, collaborating with industry and getting rail
up to code on data-driven technology
SSH: Tell us about these innovative solutions from Atlas Copco.
MJ: What we’re trying to do is transform the way that customers not only produce equipment for the rail industry but also how they maintain it in MRO facilities. The impact of our smarter solutions for assembly and maintenance is creating efficiencies for the customer, as well as creating opportunities to move towards a decarbonised rail network.
Our customers are companies that produce the rolling stock and also those which operate MRO facilities, so we support both manufacturers and operators. Atlas Copco can deliver solutions across the whole sector, so if there is a factory building digital signalling equipment, then we are able to provide solutions for them to enhance what they do. As a holistically focused business, we're looking at the rail industry as a whole, although much of our growth to date has come from supporting rolling stock manufacture.
We break down our general industry portfolio into segments. One of those segments is Rail, and we've designed bespoke products to support that industry. As the rail sector has moved towards digitalization and having smart factories that produce their equipment, we've come along with them by offering those solutions that can transform them to that point.
SSH: So what kind of solutions are we talking about?
PM: If you look at how the rail sector operates, it is still using basic equipment like hand torque wrenches and air powered nutrunners that tighten to specific, often high, torques.
So one of the products that we have introduced is our smart torque wrench.
This is a transducerized, calibrated instrument that can apply torque across a range of values, which means that one smart wrench can replace three or four basic click-type torque wrenches, and give them traceability of the tightening data which can be sent to the network and stored for reference and analysis.
Another product is our transducerized high torque nutrunners, these are power tools that apply torque across a range and records data on the network. These are usually used on safety critical and quality critical tightening processes.
‘At the core of it, we're tightening the bolt, but we're actually offering everything that allows the customer to record and analyse the data to control the quality and to guide the operator and fully connect to their plant.’
