Rarely in the history of rail maintenance has there been such a clear opportunity to introduce new technology and to leverage information and communication systems aiming to search for improvements in equipment maintenance, infrastructure or in maintenance operations.

It is currently possible to find-out in the market a wide range of monitoring devices, interfaces or communication systems configurable at a moderate cost, as well as computing technology with sufficient processing capacity to diagnose in real time and even anticipate the future behavior of the systems.

This initially favorable situation also poses two major challenges: the new onhand digital solutions will not bring the desired added-value without suitable integration and probable adaption to the existing business processes and tools, which is not usually easy according to the new dimension of the project and the greater uncertainty in the outcome. On the other hand the wider diagnostic and interconnection possibilities of digital systems, usually able to provide huge volumes of data, make the identification of key parameters difficult enough to draw effective conclusions in terms of maintenance optimization, thus data structuring, data filtering and prediction algorithms play a fundamental role.

Alstom, with its global experience in railway maintenance and more than 25 years in maintaining Very High Speed Trains, will show few examples of new technologies brought to equipment maintenance and operational management, as well as those difficulties and relevant findings in this process.