Previous Projects
The following undergraduate research projects were carried out by the Chair between 2011 and 2020. If you require any of the Executive Summaries or wish to know more about any of these topics, please contact us via e-mail.
Industrial Engineering Projects
- Principles and Practices of Energy Calculations and Energy Management in Maintenance
- Quantification and evaluation of customer travelling experience using quality management tools
- Scheduling Optimisation in a Maintenance Environment
- The Measurement of Labour Productivity in a Maintenance Environment
- Business Process Re-engineering of a Planning Office Facility in a Rolling Stock Maintenance Environment.
- Facilities Planning of a Rolling Stock General Overhaul Facility
- Implementation of Mission-Directed Work Teams in a Maintenance Environment
- Investigation into Problem-solving Methodologies in an Engineering Environment
- The Implementation of 5S in a maintenance environment
- Business Process Analysis of Railway Rolling Stock Supply Chains by using Lean Thinking Principles
- Facilities Planning and Layout Design of a Railway Station
- Process Improvement Strategies in Maintenance to Improve Productivity
- The development of a computerised train scheduling system
- Business Process Improvement of Scheduled Maintenance Activities in Rolling Stock Maintenance
- Decision support systems to improve financial management in a maintenance environment
- Managing change and renewal of existing management systems in rail
- Facility Layout Improvement in Rail Rolling Stock Maintenance
- Comparison of Traditional Project Management (TPM) with Agile Project Management (APM) and Risk Management for use on small-sized projects in the PRASA environment
- Optimising ventilation of passenger coaches in the rail environment
- Reliability modelling of a motor coach in the rail environment
- Investigation into the impact of support services on maintenance activities in a rail environment.
- The development of a suitable model for occupational safety systems in a rail maintenance environment
- Investigation into the possible hotspots and patterns of vandalism and theft of railway infrastructure in order to reduce disruptions in operational and maintenance schedules
- Business Process Reengineering of the Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Process of Rolling Stock at Cape Metrorail and the Salt River Maintenance Depot
- Improving Response Time for Corrective Maintenance for Rail Infrastructure
- An integrated vandalism and theft analysis for Rolling Stock
- The Application of Process Planning methods and software in a Rail Maintenance Environment
- The Redesign of the Layout of a Component Shop in the Rail Maintenance Environment
- Adaptation of the Stellenbosch Learning Factory into a learning factory maintenance system
- Development of a reliability improvement model for train sets in the rail environment
- A proposed framework to be used in choosing simulation packages for transport exchange modes: Simio and Anylogic are considered
- A Decision Support Framework for Outsourcing the Maintenance of Physical Assets: A case study of Rolling Stock Rotating Machines
- Front-line supervisor effectiveness assessment in an engineering shop-floor
- Equipment Replacement Analysis in terms of Life Cycle Costing of Energy Intensive Equipment within the Maintenance Environment
- Investigation of a Supply Chain Decision Model for the Allocation of Vandalised Rolling Stock
- The application of reality technology in learning factory maintenance: a case study of rail rolling stock
- An Industry 4.0 maintenance roadmap for railway assets
- Facility layout planning of a component refurbishment facility
- Scheduling methods in a Rail maintenance environment
- Design, planning and testing of a board game that can be used for teaching rail awareness to rural communities
- Improving Response Time for Corrective Maintenance for Rail Infrastructure
- The Contribution of Maintenance towards Reliability Improvement
- An investigation into the financial requirements of technology transfer in railways
- Simulation of Real World Railway Operations using a Model Train Scenario
- Investigation into the use of reality technology for inspection and fault finding
- Sequencing of maintenance tasks to optimise resources
- Economic risk analysis to protect assets
- The application of digitisation to blend maintenance with the 4th industrial revolution
- Investigate and design a scheduling model to improve the scheduling of trains, coaches and passenger loads for railway operations
- Investigation into the feasibility of creating eco-friendly railway systems in Southern Africa
- Investigation into the impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution on Human Resources in the Rail Environment
- An efficient schedule for long distance train service in South Africa
- Investigation into an applicable timetabling software for metro rail service in South Africa
- Development of a rail rolling stock health index
- A railway network analysis of the City of Cape Town’s Integrated Public Transport Network Plan 2032
- Analysis of TrainTracer geo-referenced data for rail infrastructure maintenance improvement
- A feasibility study for renewable photovoltaic technology interventions for railway vehicles
Mechanical Engineering Projects
- Investigate wheel wear in the rail environment
- Investigate coil swelling of traction motors in the Rail environment
- Development of passenger counting system for the passenger rail environment
- Develop a method to calibrate a rail wheel profile measuring instrument
- Investigation of flameproof materials for passenger coaches
- Develop a portable method to measure rail wheel profiles using a 3D camera
- Simulation of the brake system operation of a 5M/10M train
- Development of a Passenger Counting System for the Train Transport Industry (Iteration 2)
- Investigation of coil swelling of traction motors in the rail environment
- Optimization of Finite Element Analysis for Rail wheels
- Investigation into the effect of normal and excessive braking on PRASA train wheels
- Investigation into the stress relaxation and creep experienced during excessive braking on PRASA train wheels
- Commercialising of the spring tester to accommodate more spring types and snubbers
- The use of vibration in railway condition monitoring
- Development of a passenger counting system for the passenger rail environment (Iteration 3)
- Investigation and upgrading of the 5M Motor Coach vacuum braking system to the modern compressed air operated disk brakes
- Design of tools and methods to remove parts from the armature shafts of traction motors
- The design of a safe hauling system for 8M train sets
- The adaption of a coil winding machine
- Development of a passenger counting system incorporating facial recognition for the passenger rail environment (Iteration 4)
- Development of passenger counting system for the passenger rail environment (Iteration 5)
- Investigate wheel wear in the rail environment (Iteration 2)
- An investigation into the railway points machine to optimise operational functionality
- Development of a passenger counting system for the passenger rail environment (Iteration 6)
- Preliminary investigation into alternative materials for train wheels and rails
- Improvements to the spring testing jig
- Development of a passenger counting system for the passenger rail environment (Iteration 7)
- The design of a repair workstation for a railway traction motor
Civil Engineering Projects
- Modular pedestrian bridges
- Evaluation of a new rail service between Cape Town CBD, Dunoon and Atlantis
- Study of the Metrorail Business Express trains in Cape Town
- Accessible pedestrian bridges: useful or painful?
Electrical? Engineering Projects
- A Systematic Approach to Energy Saving in a Maintenance Environment
- Maintenance management to improve peak energy demand
- Investigating Possible Causes of Flash overs in the HT bay of the 5M2A trainsets
- Early warning tampering system for overhead rail lines?
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