The society in Japan is influenced by the big changes in social circumstances : declining birthrate, aging, and globalization. So is the railway industry; such various high-quality services as safety, comfort, and convenience are required though safe and accurate transportation was the former requirements. AFC (Automatic Fare Collection) system is one of the important systems to support railway management. "Suica," the IC Card Ticket System introduced by East Japan Railway Company in November 2001, has adopted the autonomous decentralized technologies into the system architecture and has developed the structure that a trouble does not spread to whole the system. As a result, it has realized continuous high-quality services by extendibility and reliability of the system. Though it has been providing a lot of new services since its installation, no fatal troubles have ever occurred. This paper explains the backgrounds of Suica system development, the introduced technologies, and the operational status after the implementation. Furthermore, the social infrastructure Suica's strategy for MOT (Management of Technology) is mentioned.
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