We combine deep industrial expertise with private equity insight to drive real results. We future-proof your business with concrete, tailored and impactful consulting services. How to Increase Utilization of Your Rail Assets Organizations that run on heavy assets - locomotives, railcars, track and terminals - are challenged every day to deliver high levels of service: greater asset availability, reliability and utilization, at a lower unit cost. Rail assets are extraordinarily capital-intensive and carry long planning lead times; a single new or rebuilt locomotive can take twelve to eighteen months to field. For decades the reflex answer to service pressure was the same – buy more, and newer, equipment. That approach is now a way of the past. As demand shifts, emissions regulation tightens and capital budgets tighten with them, the durable advantage comes from getting more capacity, reliability and life out of the fleet that already exists. Doing that well requires re-examining asset management through a more strategic and integrated lens – one that pairs capital investment with disciplined operational and cultural change. This is the approach EFESO built with a Class 1 railroad, and then extended across every major asset group. It begins not with a purchase order, but with a simple question: how well are we actually using what we own? EFESO's Enterprise Asset Management Approach Is Built to Achieve Greater capacity from existing assets – enabling more productive and safer use of the current fleet, and offsetting the need to replace as many units. Improved reliability – fewer failures and line-of-road fallouts, extending asset life and lowering the size and frequency of future capital investment. Lower unit cost – driving down car-cycle days, dwell and cost-per-unit across locomotives, cars, infrastructure and crews. Safer transportation & operations – better-maintained, more reliable assets directly reduce mechanical failures and hazardous conditions. A sustainable improvement culture – a workforce and leadership that own performance and hold the gains long after the project ends. The EFESO EAM Approach: Utilization, Reliability & Unit Cost EFESO’s work with a Class 1 railroad began by asking pointed questions about the performance of its assets – how often each is in use, how well it works, and how much it costs to run. Dozens of operating questions collapsed into three drivers that anyone in the organization could understand and act on. The power of the model is its simplicity. The three drivers are terms everyone can understand and relate to, they are standardized across all assets, and they are concrete and measurable at the individual asset level. Because the relationship between them is intuitive, “what’s good” becomes the shared optimization of all three at once – not one at the expense of another. Enabling greater capacity out of existing assets, in turn, results in a more productive and safer use of the current fleet: a safer transportation system, a more productive and effective workforce, and genuine confidence in asset reliability. Utilization How often is the asset performing its intended purpose – pulling freight, moving loads, carrying track capacity? The single question that matters most. Reliability How well does it work? Root-cause analysis of repeat and top failure modes converts unplanned corrective work into planned, preventive maintenance. Unit Cost What does it cost to use? Labor, material, fuel and capital per unit – made visible so every project can be tied to a financial impact. “What really matters is how often the asset is performing its intended purpose.” – THE PRINCIPLE BEHIND EFESO’S SIMPLIFIED ASSET PERFORMANCE MEASURE Measuring What Matters, and a Strategy to Act on It A Simple, Shared Performance Measure Before anything could be improved it had to be measured in a way the whole organization would trust. EFESO built a single, understandable index of asset performance – the Asset Performance Index (API): the share of time an asset is actually performing its intended purpose, such as a locomotive pulling cars. Every hour an asset is not working is sorted into a “time-loss bucket” – train-to-train dwell, line-of-road failures, repositioning, fallout, repair and PM dwell, and other losses. Identifying the biggest contributors to those buckets, and targeting improvements to shrink them, is the key to maximizing utilization. The measure deliberately captures losses from both reliability and utilization, so it never rewards one at the expense of the other. EFESO also benchmarked other heavy-asset, best-in-class industries – airlines, trucking, mining, utilities, oil & gas – to see what real-time asset knowledge, rapid deployment and targeted maintenance practices set them apart from railroads, and where the greatest room to improve lay. The 4-Step Strategy Development Process To turn those questions into a company-wide model applicable to every major asset group, EFESO applied a four-step Strategy Development Process. Notably, before EAM implementation fewer than 5% of the three major asset teams’ projects – including capital and modifications – were tied to improving asset utilization or reliability. The process re-anchored every work stream to a measurable API and unit-cost impact. “Maximize the time a locomotive is pulling cars.” A simple, understandable roadmap for mechanical and network management was born. -EFESO LOCOMOTIVE FLEET STRATEGY ROADMAP Work Streams & Governance A vision only matters if it changes what happens on the shop floor and on the ballast. EFESO pairs a structured, collaborative project method with hands-on deployment and disciplined governance, so improvements are found, made, and held. Work Streams Tied to Financial Impact For each time-loss bucket, asset teams defined a clear current state, a future state, the measures between them, and a champion accountable for delivery. Improving the assignment of locomotives to trains, reducing line-of-road failures, cutting terminal dwell and optimizing shop scheduling each became a work stream with a baseline value, a target, and a dollar figure attached – value creation linked directly to API and unit-cost improvement. Governance Every 100 Days EFESO established governance through a senior-management steering committee that reports EAM progress to the Chief Operating Officer every 100 days. Work-stream champions run project reviews with their teams; an asset-performance team rolls results up monthly; and a quarterly asset committee comprised of the COO and asset VPs removes roadblocks and reports captured P&L savings. The cadence keeps improvement visible, funded and accountable from the ballast to the C-suite. “EFESO puts skin in the game and works hand-to-hand with the employees and local management – creating the right, sustainable behavior.” -THE EFESO DIFFERENCE – CHANGING CULTURE Proven, Sustainable Results The strategy is working, and the gains have held. For example, in the mechanical running-repair and heavy-repair shops, on the network, and in the numbers that reach the P&L, the improvements are measurable and durable. Collaborators We address system-level challenges such as workforce deployment, frontline leadership capability, fleet readiness, parts and supply-chain resilience, technology enablement, and service-delivery performance – linking strategic priorities to day-to-day operational execution. About EFESO Management Consultants EFESO Management Consultants is a global leader in operations strategy and performance improvement. We work closely with clients across a broad range of industries to deliver real results tailored to their unique needs. Our end-to-end services integrate industrial AI, digital solutions, sustainability, and people development, transactions and turnaround, R&D and product profitability, cost and value engineering manufacturing, procurement, supply chain. We drive transformation through 1,500+ projects annually in over 75 countries. Powered by deep industry knowledge and a commitment to lasting impact, EFESO works closely with global brands, mid-sized companies, and private equity to build resilience and future-ready operations. Download the Article Download the full article to learn more about the 4-step strategy EFESO used to increase locomotive utilization without new capital spend Transportation, Logistics and Services Transportation, Logistics and Services How we Help