Adopt a smart maintenance approach

SMRT has 2,900 maintenance staff and handles about 2 million rides a day. This information is obtained from its train operations report.

Taipei MRT has a maintenace staff of 2,000 and handles the same number of rides. This information is obtained from a recent news report.

Why does SMRT need 45% more staff compared to Taipei MRT? Is it more inefficient and unproductive?

I wish to suggest how SMRT can improve the productivity of its maintenance staff. It can make better use of data analytics to identify the equipments that need to be replaced or repaired.

How can this be done?

Most of the equipment or devices send some data to the server to indicate its status. An equipment that is not functioning will not send any data. By analysing the database, it is possible to identify the malfunctioning equipments. The maintenance and inspection work can be directed towards these equipments. 

This approach may not apply to every equipment. But it can be applied to some of the equipments and help to improve the productivity. It is the smart way, isn't it?

I would describe it as a "smart maintenance" approach. I suspect that Taipei MRT probably uses the data in this manner to identify what needs to be rectified. It probably accounts for their higher productivity.

I hope that SMRT will consider this approach.