PWMIS is a comprehensive maintenance management package for prediction of track component degradation and maintenance planning. PWMIS was developed for the China Ministry of Railways.

PWMIS consists of four subsystems that perform the key track component life analyses to forecast maintenance requirements: RailLife, TrackLife, BallastLife, and TieReport.

Each of these subsystems analyzes an individual track component independently and, where applicable, jointly with other subsystems to determine the degradation and failure rates of that track component. These degradation rates are then used to determine the life cycles of each component, and forecast the maintenance due dates.

RailLife is a comprehensive rail degradation and life and forecasting model. It performs Weibull Analysis for rail fatigue forecasting and Multi-Variate Regression Analysis for rail wear forecasting on predefined rail segments. From these analyses, RailLife provides recommendations for relay rail replacement and for spot rail replacement (curve patch).

TrackLife is a comprehensive surfacing cycle analysis model used for forecasting surfacing maintenance requirements. It uses statistical analysis, engineering analysis and exception report analysis on historical track geometry degradation data to forecast future surfacing needs.

BallastLife is a forecasting approach for determining track undercutting cycles. The forecasting technique is based on empirical analysis which estimates ballast life as determined by ballast quality and other environmental parameters.

TieReport is a reporting facility. It reports the number of bad ties by type on a mile-by-mile basis.

The PWMIS interface communicates with a DB2 database using ADO data controls and ODBC connections. It allows for more than one database to be connected at one time, enabling output data to be written to a different database from the input database.

The PWMIS interface allows the user to view the input data from the client's DB2 database. It also allows the user to view and delete output tables.

PWMIS divides the track into "homogeneous" segments. It first divides the track based on track characteristics such as curvature, rail weight, rail installation dates, sleeper types, ballast type, etc. If necessary, the track is further divided according to operational parameters such as: operating speed, annual tonnage, cumulative tonnage, axle load, etc. PWMIS can segment the track by depot boundaries or by line. PWMIS automatically creates the output segmentation file names, which can be overridden by the user.

After the track segments are created the user can run the PWMIS analysis models, either individually or jointly. The analysis status is displayed while PWMIS performs the analyses.

PWMIS comes with a built-in custom report generator. With a few clicks on the report criteria dialog interface, the user can create up to 20 types of different reports.

The custom report facility accesses both input and output databases to generate the reports according to the filter criteria specified by the user.

The reports can be viewed in either tabular format or graphical presentation. These reports can also be saved and later retrieved within the program.