In Sweden, the railway system is deregulated, with severallayers of operators and contractors. By defining maintenance, its objectives and responsibilities, an operation canbecome cost effective and problem-free. To make this workin a system with many stakeholders, good information flowis crucial. With a holistic computerized information system, each stakeholder can assess maintenance effectiveness, including availability, reliability and maintainability.

For this knowledge to be available, the condition of the railway vehicle assets has to be monitored, either manually and/or withwayside detection equipment. If work orders are automatically generated, human factors (i.e., inconsistency) can bereduced. The article uses a vehicle wheel axle as a casestudy. The maintenance cost for this asset generally represents a large portion of the total maintenance budget; forexample, re-tyring a wheel costs about ten times more thanre-profiling