Computer maintenance management systems (CMMS) are widely used in the
maintenance of rolling stock in the railway industry. All of these systems act as
effective databases for storing the technical history of all the rolling stock operated by
each train operating company (TOC). Some of the more contemporary CMMSs have the
capability of producing trends in the data that are recorded, which engineers use to
determine what changes need to be made to the maintenance policy. However, most if
not all the CMMSs used for the purpose of maintaining rolling stock do not have the
capability of providing maintenance engineers or asset managers with decision
support – i.e. although the CMMSs are capable of analysing the data that are recorded,