Keywords: optimization, security, reliability, management, scheduling, programming, maintenance, operation, strategy.

Nowadays railway operators are focused on new operating strategies capable of managing their fleet more efficiently, in order to offer more regular and reliable services.

This paper discusses an issue directly related to methods of reducing costs to implement the increased lifespan of the wheels of railway locomotives, more precisely, to optimize the planning and programming of machining wheels of locomotives. Its main objectives are to:

a)

Develop a methodology focused on cost reduction, which will be applied in the planning and control of machining railway wheels for a fleet of locomotives;

b)

Evaluate the application of the concept of witness groove in the flanges of railway wheels of locomotives, as a way of reducing costs and increasing the availability of these assets;

c)

Develop a method to increase the capacity of the milling and machining service life of railway wheels of locomotives during the process of machining railway wheels.

The data presented in this paper consists of a case study drawn from the analysis of the procedures used by the company MRS Logística Corporation for the planning and control of machining railway wheels of locomotives. It is believed that the method of optimizing the process proposed here may be available to meet similar processes of planning and programming of rail rolling assets in general in other railroads.

Concern about costs is the key in all its processes and one of the main costs is related to the wear of railway wheels. For that reason, studies have been done in a large company in the rail heavy freight sector (heavy haul) on the current processes of management planning and control of machining railway wheels of locomotives on a belowground milling machine, Kawasaki, which currently uses as a profile, the standard AAR-1B and other associated processes, to achieve productivity gains.

Thus, a search to create a methodology to optimize the scheduling of sending locomotives began, as well as the practical application of the concept of the groove witness in this process.

It has been observed that leaving the groove witness in the flange of the wheel you achieve a cost reduction of approximately twenty percent and increase the availability of the asset and the optimal management of the charts of the locomotives at the right time for wheel, inversion or replacement, to increase beyond the safety rail operation, the lifetime of railway wheels.

The paper shows this optimized methodology, used for the planning and controlling of locomotives for machining, as well as the gains from the adoption of the groove witness in a one year analysis period after its implementation in the machining process.

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