With more than 154 million passengers transported each year, the expansion of tram lines, the renewal of the fleet, and the creation of France’s largest tram maintenance center—the company is investing to address new mobility challenges and support growth in the Nantes region.
To drive this transformation and ensure the performance of its equipment, SEMITAN has relied on the CARL Source CMMS since 2012. At the heart of the operator’s information system, CARL Source structures processes, ensures data reliability, and paves the way for increasingly predictive and connected maintenance.
Supporting the network’s ramp-up
In Nantes, the development of new urban centers such as the Île de Nantes is reshaping the city’s landscape and the organization of the public transit network. Faced with these challenges, SEMITAN is adapting. It plans to launch new tram lines, introduce new generations of vehicles, and modernize its industrial facilities with the opening of the Babinière technical center in August 2025. With nearly14,000 m² dedicated to tram maintenance, this site is now France’s largest tram maintenance facility, capable of performing major maintenance, conducting comprehensive overhauls, and managing a centralized spare parts warehouse.
Against this backdrop of growth and diversification in equipment, effective management of technical data, maintenance operations, and logistics flows has become a key factor in performance. It is precisely for this reason that the CARL Source CMMS plays a central role within SEMITAN’s information system.
Semitan by the Numbers
CARL Source, a cornerstone of SEMITAN’s information system
For more than thirteen years, CARL Source has played a central role in SEMITAN’s operations. As a true industry reference system, the solution brings together the activities of the methods, maintenance, scheduling, logistics, and procurement departments within a single information database.
The solution’s functional scope allows you to manage:
- Rolling stock and fixed installations.
- Preventive maintenance plans and corrective maintenance.
- Inventory and Supplies.
- Purchasing and Contracts.
- Budget monitoring .
- Wealth Management .
- Vehicle Capital Expenditure Planning .
- Reports of exploitation related to the real-time traffic management tool.
CARL Source is also deeply integrated into SEMITAN’s digital ecosystem through multiple interfaces with tools for operations, reporting, technical documentation, and, more recently, real estate asset management.
Operational data is fed directly into the CMMS to trigger alerts and facilitate the management of service calls. This digital continuity helps improve the teams’ responsiveness and the quality of technical monitoring.
” The CMMS is now the backbone of SEMITAN’s maintenance information system. It ensures the continuity of processes among the technical, logistics, and operational teams. “
Tom Gobardhan, IT Applications Specialist in the IT Department.
Measurable benefits for technical and operations teams
For technical teams, CARL Source makes it possible to organize the entire maintenance cycle and processes for rolling stock.
Maintenance schedules define the necessary resources, related parts, completion times, and maintenance intervals. Automatic triggers based on mileage allow for the proactive planning of preventive maintenance and the optimization of vehicle downtime.
Each intervention is logged in the equipment history, ensuring complete traceability of the operations performed and facilitating the analysis of technical events.
Beyond operational management, the CMMS also serves as a decision-making tool. The data collected makes it possible to generate equipment reliability metrics,identify recurring failures, conduct root cause analyses, and track maintenance costs.
The Benefits of CARL Source for the Procurement and Logistics Department
SEMITAN currently manages more than 23,500 stock items across 7 stores in the metropolitan area, representing nearly 11 M€ in inventory. Each year, more than 5,200 purchase orders and 150,000 inventory transactions are processed through the CMMS.
The solution supports teams throughout the logistics process, from the initial request to budget tracking. Purchase proposals are generated based on inventory parameters and procurement conditions defined by the teams. Each item is precisely located within the warehouses, and every movement is recorded in the accounting system, ensuring complete traceability of inventory flows.
CARL Source also facilitates transfers between sites, the management of annual inventories, and financial tracking of inventory through updates to weighted average prices, invoice verification, and the management of supplier disputes.
“The CMMS provides us with a comprehensive and reliable overview of our supply chain. It allows us to ensure a steady supply of parts, optimize our inventory levels, and have the right part in the right place at the right time.”
Sébastien Rénier, Head of Procurement and Logistics.
The digital transformation of maintenance continues with several key projects:
- A mobile app now allows drivers to report anomalies observed in the field directly into CARL Source, improving the quality and speed of technical data collection.
- The implementation of a geographic information system (GIS) integrated with CARL Source is intended to improve the management of fixed infrastructure and enhance the oversight of construction projects by providing a better visualization of asset data.
- Furthermore, advances in rolling stock are opening up new opportunities in the area of onboard data utilization. New generations of vehicles are producing an increasing volume of technical information that can be used to support predictive maintenance initiatives, which will be managed using CARL Source.
CARL Source Transport
Our Solution for Logistics, Transportation, and Vehicle Fleets
“The strength of CARL Source lies in its ability to adapt to the specific requirements of public transportation maintenance. Managing operations based on mileage-based and schedule-based milestones, combined with a detailed analysis of technical and economic data, ensures safe operations and supports the network’s long-term development.”
Sébastien Rénier, Head of Procurement and Logistics.
