Digital Transition of the Maintenance Process: Case of Rail Transport Company

Abstract

Digital transformation of business activities has outgrown from competitive advantage to necessity in recent years. Evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) has created the world where electronic business (E-Business), document management systems (DMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have become standard, even for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in developing countries. Modern businesses focus on implementing data analysis, businessintelligence (BI) and even artificial intelligence (AI) concepts in their everyday activities, thus the digitalization of business activities is simply considered as default. Nevertheless, public companies in developing countries fall behind and struggle in this transformation process, as usual. Due to various reasons, they are still in the phase of digitalization, rather than implementing advanced solutions. Any organizational change demands unfreezing and mindset redirection, among both management and executors, which is always challenging, especially in the public sector. This paper aims to explain the preconditions and benefits of digital transition of the train maintenance process, and key challenges in such transformation.