The eight-step framework consisting of organization, procedure, personnel, time study, rate analysis, utilization analysis, rightsizing, and benchmarking is used to understand and improve productivity and efficiency of railroad cyclical curve rail replacement processes at a major Northeastern commuter railroad. The Railroad is organized into eight geographical maintenance subdivisions supplemented by systemwide track gangs performing capital replacement and reconstruction work. Curve rail replacement work under continuous track outage in catenary electrified territory requires thirty-four distinct steps and eleven machines types. Normally one operator is assigned per machine. Laggers and spike pullers are slowest and sets work pace. Gang can replace about fifteen linear rail feet per minute if extra machines are provided to allow operations at a robust and steady average rate. Root cause of low machine utilization in this setting are the daily setup/preparation and tear down burden, and mobilization and demobilization at each site. Vacation and legitimate personnel unavailability drives requirements for spare employees, requiring 61 heads to fully staff the 45-position gang. Three major recommendations result from this study: (1) consider task-specialized gangs to ensure optimal machine and personnel mix; (2) plan cyclical curve rail replacement sequentially to improve machine utilization; (3) consider establishing extra lists based on craft rather than providing coverage within each gang.
