A safe journey to the digital future in the rail industry

The rail industry is changing. Digital and interconnected solutions are the future in railroad technology. With that, safety requirements are also increasing, because wherever people are being transported, safety is priority number one. One company dedicated to providing safety is Pilz. The company is a technology leader with more than 70 years of experience in safety and automation technology.

Jan van der Heide, Sales Manager BU Rail at Pilz Netherlands explains, "A special business unit Rail has been formed within Pilz Netherlands and competence centers have been set up worldwide from the parent organization. From there, we look at what is needed in Europe (and beyond) in terms of rail solutions."

"We are constantly converting ideas into market-ready innovations and making them suitable for railroads." Jan van der Heide, Pilz Netherlands.

Solutions in line with customer expectations

"Pilz's goal is to translate customer-specific questions into customer-specific solutions. For example, we are now developing generic software blocks for level crossings," Van der Heide continues. "The end customer (ProRail or an industrial customer) will soon be able to put together a digital level crossing very quickly and easily by flexibly combining our function blocks. Fast, but above all safe. Safety comes first, but it takes time to get something certified. We proactively respond to this by certifying the components separately." Railroad customers around the world are already using Pilz components and systems in a variety of applications.

Innovation plays an important role

"We are constantly converting ideas into market-ready innovations and making them suitable for railroads. It makes us an important partner for a changing railroad sector that is committed to digitalization. Also in terms of consulting," said Van der Heide. "The investment for a system integrator is large and people don't switch systems very quickly, although they would sometimes like to. People are wary of the complex and difficult procedures, but we translate that into simple and intuitive programming. With the PSS 4000-R automation system, we therefore offer a proven and secure system for customized and highly economical solutions for the rail industry."

Automation system PSS 4000.

Automation System

PSS 4000-R is compatible according to the highest safety category. The automation system is based on the multi-master principle, which means that several PLC controls are connected together on a long railroad, saving endless wiring. The system is ideally suited for digital control tasks and retrofitting. "The modular hardware and easy programming give our solutions unparalleled flexibility."

Translating Industry 4.0 to Rail 4.0

With this, Pilz is breaking through the lack of universality in the rail industry. "Based on digitalization and standardization, we want to make objects so generic that it doesn't matter what brand of switch is behind them. But never at the expense of safety," Van der Heide adds. "Safety is our core business and is in our DNA. We've been working on it for the entire industrial revolution. We take that knowledge and expertise into the digitalization of the rail market by offering generic solutions that rail customers can (re)use for application in and around the track."

Rail protocols standardize in Europe

"Not only in the Netherlands, but also beyond," he continued. "Europe wants to improve and standardize the rail network. The automation system forms the core of digital railroads in this regard. By standardizing interfaces, a significant reduction in life cycle costs for signaling systems can be achieved. This is why there is EULYNX: a European initiative of 13 infrastructure managers to standardize interfaces. Pilz indicates that the blocks they have developed could be interfaced under the ERTMS protocol to control field elements."