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New technologies applied to railway maintenance
The new decision-making process consistently manages the former available information and
established criteria, jointly with the information provided by the new monitoring system, thus
providing means for questioning the maintenance interventions and decisions made so far.
4. Conclusions
The progress in processing technologies and the emergence of the Connected Industry are
incentives to reconsider the way in which the railway maintenance activity is organized and
executed.
Pioneering actions such as the use of augmented reality in the execution of maintenance tasks,
the development of predictive platforms and technologies or the use of drones to perform
infrastructure maintenance and inspections at electric substation are some examples of
initiatives that are starting to shape this change.
But the real leap will come from reliable data interpretation by Big Data techniques and Machine
Learning to effectively cross-check commercial service information, maintenance interventions,
real-time equipment diagnostics, infrastructure condition and external conditions. At the
horizon one can expect a notable increase in the performance of railway vehicles in terms of
service availability and reliability as well as opportunities to optimize maintenance costs.
An adequate integration of technology devices and the revision of maintenance processes,
together with the development of competencies and skills for the effective data processing will
be key-drivers to succeed.
5. References
• The 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report Accelerating change: How innovation is driving
digital, always-on supply chain, Deloitte 2016
• Why Industry 4.0 is not only about IoT devices - Ben Merton, April 2017 Errores al
implementar un proyecto de IoT, mcpro - Elisabeth Rojas 2016 Industry of things world.
Survey report 2017
• Alstom Predictive and IoT researchs and outcomes.
International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 31
