This JVTC report identifies potential maintenance improvements and suggests maintenance actions which will support the reliability of the SSAB railway transport logistic system. Representatives from SSAB, Duroc Rail AB, EuroMaint, AAE, JVTC and SWECO have contributed to this report. 

The SSAB railway transport system needs an extra 23.5% wheel-sets waiting to be used in the maintenance process. Failure mode 331 represents 73 % of all maintained wheel axles. SSAB cost of re-wheeling (IS3) is 12.8 times higher than re-profiling (IS1). LKAB/MTAB cost for IS3 is 4-5 times higher than IS1 cost per wheel-set. An increase in IS1 and a decrease in IS3 lower the total maintenance cost. This result is in line with the full scale test performed by SSAB in 2011.

 More extensive studies on availability, reliability, maintainability, recoverability and maintenance supportability of the transport system should be carried out to find key performance indicators. The goal is to determine mean failure rate, decrease downtime and support maintenance. 

SSAB should establish holistic maintenance processes jointly with the maintenance contractors to ensure consistent application of maintenance and enhanced maintenance support. The work can be organized and managed by a consultancy company with experience in railway operation and maintenance issues.

Contractors must agree on a transparent maintenance information system that includes the following information: wheel-set status descriptions and location data; preventive and corrective maintenance task descriptions; history of preventive and corrective maintenance actions; reports of failures and defects (failure catalogue), including the operating condition when the failure is discovered; condition monitoring data from detectors and manual inspections; economic and maintenance performance data. 

A new work order system should be developed with maintenance tasks based on updated information from the contractors. The work order requests can be triggered automatically by the maintenance information in the system data on predetermined triggers such as wayside detector information, calendar time, elapsed time since last task, and travel distance; alternatively, they can be initiated manually during inspections.