A Study on Life Cycle Cost on Railway Locomotive Systems

Life cycle cost analysis is compulsively required for the system operation. System operation costs are consisted of acquisition, operation, maintenance and so on. In the beginning of the system planning, we need to take into account of various costs following the system operating. To implement LCC, we need to analyze system life cycle to identify all costs during system life. The costs can be divided into three parts. The first part is purchasing cost, the second for operating cost and the last for disposal cost. The second operating cost can be decomposed of operating cost included labor, energy consumption cost for system running, maintenance costs to keep systems healthy, delay cost caused from maintenance and hazard cost, and so on. In this paper, we carried out for railway locomotives which operate over more 30years and which cost about 10 million USD. We decompose the life cycle of the locomotives and break down the locomotives into subsystems to require maintenance or not, and subsystems to need energy or not. We showed how to decide optimal locomotives through cost identification and system breakdown.