SBS Transit Rail puts its trust in 6Sense
It exemplifies how Singapore continues to set new standards in public transportation management and commuter experience
[SINGAPORE] The Republic’s public transport system is renowned worldwide for its reliability, efficiency and seamless connectivity – a vital backbone supporting the city-state’s bustling urban life. As the demands on this network continue to grow, SBS Transit Rail is pushing the boundaries of operational excellence with Project 6Sense.
This innovative, data-driven solution is designed to ensure that the North East Line (NEL) and Downtown Line (DTL) deliver consistently smooth journeys for more than a million commuters every day. By harnessing advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), Project 6Sense exemplifies how Singapore continues to set new standards in public transportation management and commuter experience.
The development of Project 6Sense followed a meticulous design-thinking process. SBS Transit’s data analytics team began by empathising with the operations team, understanding the challenges they faced when dealing with train faults.
They also recognised the limitations of traditional methods, which involved manually collecting and processing data from disparate sources, and embarked on a journey to create a comprehensive, automated solution. The team identified the need for a unified platform that could automate data retrieval and processing. Through ideation, they developed data pipelines to streamline data processing according to user needs.
Prototypes of the dashboard were created in Power BI and rigorously tested before user acceptance testing was conducted using historical train incidents. The data-driven dashboard offers a holistic view of the health status of individual trains across the entire fleet, and categorises trains into four health statuses: healthy trains, trains on watch list, trains with a high false alarm rate and at-risk trains.
This classification empowers the operations team with stronger operational awareness, facilitates informed decision-making, and significantly improves efficiency and productivity. The system also uniquely integrates machine-generated train-borne alarms with train maintenance information from various systems, even those from different manufacturers.
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What sets Project 6Sense apart is its originality and customisation. With no off-the-shelf product available to meet specific requirements, SBS Transit developed the system in-house. It is the only product that integrates data from various systems and manufacturers, presenting meaningful information to enhance operational awareness and facilitate effective decision-making.
The NEL and DTL’s unique integration of five core railway system components from different manufacturers further necessitated a customised solution, making Project 6Sense tailor-made for their specific needs.
Project 6Sense also leverages AI techniques, specifically natural language processing, to process and predict the cause of issues based on unstructured text descriptions in maintenance work orders.
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Processing unstructured text poses challenges such as spelling mistakes, shorthand and context-specific acronyms. Project 6Sense cleans and processes this information using AI, achieving a higher degree of accuracy and providing deeper insights for the operations team.
The impact of Project 6Sense has been substantial. It allows SBS Transit’s operations team to enhance operational awareness, leading to better management of train faults and minimising delays and disruptions for commuters.
The system also facilitates effective decision-making, enabling staff to identify patterns and respond quickly to incidents.
Moreover, Project 6Sense eliminates the slow and onerous task of manually downloading and analysing data, improving efficiency and allowing employees to focus on higher-level tasks and career development.
It directly contributes to sustaining a high mean kilometres between failure (MKBF) in rail reliability, with delays lasting less than five minutes.
The DTL has clocked more than eight million train-km in MKBF, making it one of the most reliable lines globally, while the NEL has consistently clocked four million train-km.
By leveraging AI and advanced analytics to provide insights into the health status of the train fleet, Project 6Sense’s innovative dashboard is not only a game changer, but also crucial in maintaining the city-state’s reputation for transport reliability.
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