Implementation of eMaintenance concept on the Iron Ore Line in Sweden

The Swedish railway is after deregulation composed, of several different stakeholders, each one with individual objectives and strategies to maintain their assets and rolling stock. Although some maintenance data are common between the stakeholders, no greater sharing of these data exists. The insufficient data availability impacts the effectiveness in maintenance decision making.The Luleå Railway Research Center (JVTC) has in more than a decade conducted research in eMaintenance. One of the objectives with eMaintenance research is to develop maintenance decision support tools through enhanced use of information and communication technology for data analytics from various data sources. These tools can also be used to enable condition based maintenance to minimize disruptions and optimise the maintenance cost in a railway system. Another objective this research is to discover how to offer operators, infrastructure managers and system integrators access to central computerised data to support decision making within operation and maintenance.eMaintenance solutions for railway are now being implemented in a pilot project called ePilot119 in the northern part of Sweden on track section 119 between Luleå and Boden. ePilot119 delivers a collaborative platform aimed to enable the development of eMaintenance solutions based on the needs and requirements from various stakeholders. These solutions are expected to enable and transform the Swedish fragmented rail industry to an integrated system, both from an organizational and technical point of view. Some of the objectives are to enhance the sharing of data, developing decision support, define the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and transform ePilot119 to a common natural process for sharing maintenance decision support for the railway.However, implementing eMaintenance solutions to support effective and efficient maintenance decision-making related to a complex technical system (i.e. railway) and with a large number of heterogeneous stakeholders is challenging, and requires appropriate tools (e.g. framework, approaches, methodologies, and technologies).Hence, this paper aims to identify some of the significant factors which need to be considered in order to develop an appropriate implementation process and collaboration platform, which aim to facilitate maintenance decision-making through eMaintenance solutions. By identifying these factors that might hinder the execution of the project