For Japanese railroad companies, the management of facilities in the fields of signal, communication and track maintenance is important. We have developed and are now using a facility management system that has the functions of ledger management and automatic drawing. Although we have proposed to use portable terminals for this system as a means to collect inspection data, they are not used as expected due to the difficulties of operation and carrying. Therefore, we paid attention to i-mode cellular phones and studied the possibility to use them in place of the existing portable terminals for the facility management system. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of i-mode cellular phone, proposes to use it as an effective means for data collection, and reports about a trial development.
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