Life Cycle Costing in High Complex Industries—Developing and Applying a Life Cycle Costing Approach in the Railway Industry

In terms of sustainable thinking, life cycle costing attracts major notice among railway industries all over Europe. Europe’s railway companies reconsider several reasons for the special need of life cycle costing investigations within the railway infrastructure. Ultimately, the railway companies address the question “how can life cycle costs of a signalling system be measured, considering the special circumstances in the railway industry”. Due to the reason that railway industries are bound to various regulatory rules and because of the high complexity of a signalling system, life cycle costs cannot be evaluated by simple cost measurement approaches. To analyse life cycle costs among European railway industries and to gain cost reductions by deriving consolidated findings from a cost comparison among industries of different countries, a special methodology to analyse life cycle costs has been applied within the European funded research project Integrated European Signalling System (INESS). Both life cycle phases, the product structure of interlocking systems itself and most important cost categories have been considered. Therefore, the whole life cycle of signalling systems has been analysed with a special view on railway operators. This paper describes an approach how life cycle costs have been evaluated based on the European norm DIN EN 60300-3-3 and how other industries can learn from this application.