Hitachi Rail Acquires Omnicom

Hitachi Rail has announced the acquisition of Omnicom, the digital rail monitoring business, from Balfour Beatty.

The acquisition will form part of Hitachi’s efforts to further grow its digital asset management business, HMAX, which can be found on more than 2,000 trains across the globe.

Included in the purchase are both software and hardware for the surveying, inspection and monitoring of rail infrastructure assets, including the overhead line and track.

The technology can be installed on trains and utilises edge computing, as well as machine learning, to provide close-to-real-time anomaly detection across rail tracks, enabling the collection of trillions of bytes of images per day.

Hitachi Rail Executive Director and CTO, Koji Agatsuma, said:

This strategic acquisition complements our existing cutting-edge proprietary technology, backed by the digital power of the Hitachi Group. Our HMAX platform is driving the digital transformation of rail, and the addition of Omnicom’s track monitoring tools further strengthens our global offer to optimize our customer’s railway systems.

HMAX, which was launched at InnoTrans in 2024, is a digital asset management solution which integrates a wide array of live data from both trains and the surrounding rail infrastructure into one, sole platform, utilising Lumada 3.0. digital capabilities to combine the IT, OT and Products of the Hitachi Group to form one management tool.

Sanjay Razdan, Managing Director of Omnicom, said:

From today our technology will complement Hitachi Rail’s existing digital asset management solutions, enabling HMAX to deliver even more for customers around the world. This acquisition will also enable us to benefit from the unique digital capabilities of the wider Hitachi Group, enabling us to continue to innovate and deliver AI-enabled systems that can optimize the management of railway infrastructure.