Summary

The Deutsche Bahn AG is divided organisationally into operative enterprise areas and business sectors which act as joint-stock companies or private limited companies and there are also group or service functions which operate across all areas. These are combined under the umbrella organisation of the Holding Company and form a unity with the trade name "Die Bahn, DB".

The DB Netz AG has been set up in organisational terms with the network segments train formation yard/container station, long-distance network and commuter network, and the regional networks. The Netz is responsible for a wide range of tasks, from the maintenance of the entire infrastructure through train operation right up to marketing and sales of train routes.

The DB Netz AG operates a line length of approx. 37,000 km. Around 50% are electrified. The main components of the infrastructure are 450 km of tunnels, 600 km of bridges and approx. 90,000 switches. The maintenance is controlled operatively from 7 branches. These are sub-divided into 34 operating bases with a total of 167 network districts.

At the present time DB Network AG employs approx. 15,000 staff in maintenance, 80% of these for the implementation and 20% for the planning. A maintenance expenditure of around ¤1,324.1 million is planned for 2002.

Since 1999 an improvement programme has been in force on DB Netz AG which also extends to the maintenance. The aim is to raise the efficiency in the area of the maintenance volume performed by the railway itself by 30% up to 2005. The focus being not only on maintenance but also to eliminate maintenance backlogs in the infrastructure by taking selective measures with replacement investments. At the present time great efforts are being undertaken to implement the necessary measures under the rolling wheel. Here it is important to retain or improve the track quality whilst influencing the train operations as little as possible.

In the course of privatisation of the railways it is vital to organise the maintenance to be more efficient and more effective. The new organisation of the maintenance is based on three pillars:

• strategy
• basic processes / computer assistance
• increase in efficiency

To implement these three main directions, an integrated project to optimise the maintenance (NXI+) was started up with three partial projects. The question must be clarified what degree of insourcing and which "maintenance regime" should be used, as well as optimisation of the material management and the process of outsourcing.

The maintenance strategy strives to achieve an optimisation of the elements life-cycle costs (LCC), availability and quality. Major starting points for the optimisation are:

• better preventive maintenance
• an improvement of the initial condition
• the application of LCC-optimised products

At the same time an analysis of the basic processes is currently being performed, based on work plans, for commission-related and project-related maintenance.
The increase in efficiency in the maintenance depends essentially on the following measures:

• complementation of the data base at DB Netz AG
• standardisation and synchronisation of the work processes
• reorganisation of the worktime utilisation
• adaptation of the capacity management