Young Talents in Maintenance – Bridging Studies and Work

Luka, studying automation engineering at the University of Tampere, applied for a summer job at FleetCare because he was interested in what kind of jobs VR offers.

Before coming to work, Luke had no clear preconceived ideas about what exactly he would do. However, the enthusiasm and understanding of automation that he gained at school were valuable in his job, as he was involved in implementing and developing a new ERP system. He did regression testing for the development of the system. Virtually, Luka programmed agents on a computer to run a website and execute independently a sequence of events that mimic human actions. This way, potential gaps in the system can be found and fixed. 

The work was enjoyable and increased Luka's interest and knowledge of the subject. He said he was excited that what he did in the summer could streamline the work of others in the future, as the new ERP system will make maintenance more efficient. This will be reflected, for example, in fewer delays in equipment maintenance. 

"It’s nice to think that what I do can indirectly contribute to making VR’s maintenance and operations run more smoothly. At least in the future, anyway.”

VR is a very visible public operator, and its services are used not only by Luka but also by almost everyone he knows. He likes the fact that he can devote his work in maintenance to things that interest him and affect him and those close to him.

Luka said the atmosphere was pleasant to work in. From the start, he felt welcome, was able to really do his part, and was given responsibility. He was motivated by the fact that he could be involved in developing test automation and making it a bigger thing within FleetCare. Also, the fact that he could work in a way that best suits him, feels good.

"There was sort of a start-up vibe and it’s nice. We start working on something small and can make it our own and develop the activities further.”

After his summer job is over, Luka is interested in the possibility of continuing at FleetCare at some point, but first, he headed to Italy for exchange studies.

Ilmo is studying business analytics at Aalto University and worked for VR Group for the third time. He first came to VR to work in resource planning and then got involved in a more data-driven project. In the summer of 2024, Ilmo ended up as a development engineer at FleetCare. He says that it has been nice to stay at VR in different positions. 

Ilmo's work included data analytics and reporting, and he was involved in several projects. In one of them, he was building a function for the conicity calculation of locomotives and wagon wheels, and in another, he was visualizing data on different components of the fleet. The visualization allowed him to compare components with each other and see, for example, how different components have performed. 

In his work, Ilmo needed to understand statistics and VR’s maintenance as well as programming skills.

Ilmo values railways as a sector because it promotes sustainable development: "As a logistics and transport mode, railways are a relatively energy-efficient option." 

Ilmo is also interested in the sector because the field of activity is quite complex. There are many different stakeholders to deal with and data comes from many different places. Navigating through all this is interesting. The work felt rewarding and provided a nice challenge.

"It's nice to be able to harness the skills I have gained in school." 

The challenge in software development is sometimes that the information is in a form that is difficult to maintain. If Ilmo could solve things in a way that made it easy to maintain the data without causing extra work, it felt good: "It was motivating when I could come up with solutions that helped and smoothed the work someone else was doing." 

For the customer, the train passenger, Ilmo's work was reflected in more efficient maintenance and servicing. He also contributed to the safety of rail transport, for example through cone counting, which ensures that the wheels of trains remain safe.

After the summer, Ilmo continued his studies. Currently, he is writing his master’s thesis for FleetCare on developing natural language processing models for analyzing rolling stock fault descriptions.