Atelier 57, our Industry 4.0 workshop, has all the latest technology for upgrading and modernizing trains. The Alliance for the Industry of the Future has presented 2 Hellemmes projects with its Vitrine Industrie du Futur (Showcase for the Industry of the Future) label. This award recognizes companies that improve their industrial operations by developing innovative technological solutions with practical applications. Take a tour of Atelier 57.

At the Hellemmes facility, operators wear smart glasses for maintenance tasks, enabling off-site experts to guide them remotely, in real time, and help resolve complex, non-routine problems. The payoff was immediate: problems are now easier to find and fix.

In the past, we used indoor tracks to move rolling stock around the maintenance facility. No more. Today our technicians use automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems to position decoupled coaches and coach components in the workshop. These revolutionary movers travel on modular surfaces in a space where load-bearing pillars—potential obstacles—are kept to a minimum.

Atelier 57 is also home to a robot-equipped sanding booth, as well as other high-tech statuibs used to finish the surfaces of our trains.

Atelier 57 has a floor to ceiling height of 12.5 metres, so drones can be used to inspect TGV roofs, making maintenance:

• less gruelling
• more efficient—drone pilots can now inspect 4-5 coaches a day
• more reliable—drone-collected data is traceable

In addition to drones, smart devices and other new technologies, we’re using new data-gathering systems to assess the condition of both trains and track. Why? To replace corrective maintenance with predictive maintenance, so we can detect the early warning signs of a malfunction.

• LIDAR, a laser-based remote sensing system that can scan any type of infrastructure—from track to bridges to vegetation—and create a 3D map that is accurate to within a few millimetres. Aim: create a “digital twin” of the French rail network, a model that allows us to detect variations and simplify maintenance.
• the Vibrato smartphone app, used by SNCF train drivers to measure track vibrations in real time. Result: we can respond quickly when anomalies appear in the data.

We simplified design and construction of Atelier 57 by using building information modelling (BIM) technology at every stage of the process.

We also installed systems to reduce the building’s energy consumption and minimize its carbon footprint. These include:

• automated technical workshop supervision, allowing remote door operation and scheduled preheating of machines, and
• high-performance insulation.