Company X wouldlike to reduce the cost of maintenance. Maintenance in company X is a large part of the total cost of operation and investments. These costs have increased overtime. There are 2 predominant costs: 1) Corrective maintenance stand for a large part of the operational cost of maintenance and 2) overhaul stand for a large part of the investment costs. Since the 3^rd generation maintenance strategies (maintenance theories from the 1970’s and forward) are not used to great extent in locomotive maintenance, the following 2 research questions were examined:

1. How could3^rd generation maintenance strategies reduce costs for locomotive maintenance at company X by reducing corrective maintenance costs?

2. How could3^rd generation maintenance strategies reduce costs for locomotive maintenance at company X by reducing overhaul costs?

The qualitative research method was chosen, thereby using the semi-open interview structureto interview 5 railway specialists.

The study gave following results:

• The analysis gave no concluding answers that supported that these theories could improve failures from happening or reduce the cost of overhauling systems.

• The Condition-Based Maintenance strategy could improve overhaul costs by only conducting overhauls when the system condition limits were reached and by replacing preventive overhaul actions by remote or physical on-condition monitoring

• The Condition-Based Maintenance strategy could reduce failures by remote or physical on-condition monitoring tasks instead of preventive maintenance in cases where the failures are related to aging or wear and it is technically feasible to detect a failure before its occurrence.

• A Reliability-Centered Maintenance strategy could improve overhaul costs since it analyses if the failures can be corrected by preventive exchange of parts. If not, then another type of maintenance is preferred that is less costly.

• A Reliability-Centered maintenance Strategy could reduce failures by analyzing the root cause with FMEA methodology, then analyzing its consequences for the operator using the consequence analysis and thereafter focus on the correct maintenance task to mitigate the risk of failure. This improves the reliability and mitigates the risk of failures occurring

• A Reliability-Centered Maintenance Strategy also suggests an age-exploration program to handle failures and its consequences through the whole life-cycle

The findings of this study was that it was possible to improve maintenance costs by using some of the 3^rd generation maintenance strategies. One note to be made is that data for supporting the Condition-Based Maintenance and Reliability-Centered Maintenance implementation could be hard to find for smaller operators. Therefore it is recommended to have a good cooperation with the manufacturer or sub-supplier of the locomotive type or locomotive system-supplier. The author also suggests to test the maintenance development model.