Abstract
The study investigated the reliability management of overhead track equipment in a South African railway company. The organization reported that it has been facing unsatisfactory op-erational efficiency due to chronic railways infrastructure failures such as pantograph hook-ups, derailments, and washaways, which affect performance. The unsatisfactory operational efficiency affects the organization’s revenue generation, customer confidence, and economy. The organization has maintenance plans and spends a large budget on infrastructure mainte-nance and renewals; however, the chronic failures persist. Studies suggest that the overhead track equipment is the least reliable subsystem of the electric traction system, and the re-search findings can be utilised to identify areas where the existing reliability management strategy could be improved.
The convergent mixed-method approach was selected for the study; thus, quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed independently and then compared for similarity. Maintenance depots were randomly selected to form a sample, and the secondary data col-lected from the sample included inspection reports, audit reports and failure data. The primary data concerning maintenance practices and their effectiveness and factors which affect the reliability of overhead track equipment was collected from the targeted participants using a questionnaire. Triangulation was used to compare findings from the different data sources.
The findings suggest that overall, the maintenance strategies employed are ineffective; even though some maintenance depots improved in the latter years of the study period, corrective maintenance was the most used maintenance strategy, and the five whys technique was the most frequently used failure analysis technique. Theft and vandalism contributed to the unre-liability of the overhead track equipment and caused additional factors such as operational and human factors, which affect the performance of the equipment. The research proposes reliability management strategies that the organization can implement to improve operational efficiency.