A Glance at the Indian Railways Crew Management
The Indian Railways is the world's largest railway network. The railway department is a big employer having many drivers and guards working for it. Approximately, one lakh drivers and guards work for the railways day and night. The drivers and guards are an important resource for the smooth running of trains. But the job of managing their job scheduling has always been a tiresome task. The Indian Railways is also the world's biggest employer with a staff population of over 1.5 million.
For this reason, the Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) has developed a Crew Management System. The CMS contains up to date data on these crew persons. This can prove to be of great help for allotting crew to passenger trains, freight trains and also for small movements in terminal and yards. The software has successfully completed pilot and has already been rolled out in half of the country. The respective authorities are certain for a national level roll out of the CMS within this October.
RB Das, Group General Manager, CRIS said, "We were not only facing issues in the management of the crew's job scheduling, while doing this job manually, however, lot of railway resources were underutilized. That point of time, we understood the need for an automated system which can lead to an effective and optimum utilization of the manpower," while giving details about this project.
Other than making the job scheduling easier, the CMS, helps the railways to cut costs. Deepak Ganju, General Manager - Project III, CRIS said, "Before this system every month Rupees 5 Lacks were been given as the overtime dues to drivers and guards. This amount is been reduced to 1 lack every month. Apart from this cost saving, we are able to monitor the health aspects of drivers who are on duty, their track records, their extra time payment are also been taken care."
The CRIS has developed the Crew Management System in-house. J2EE technology was used for the development of this software. Its trial began in the mid of 2007 for five lobbies in the Western Railway. The CMS was successfully rolled out in December 2007. As yet, 1000 data entry nodes at more than 144 crew booking points, spreading over 9 zones and 30 divisions of the Indian Railways, have been commissioned. They are mainly spread over the Central, Northern and Western regions of the country. It is believed that by Oct 2008, further 140 locations will be developed in Northern, Southern and Eastern regions. This will complete the computerization of crew booking in the railways. The CMS database has covered 40000 crew members and adds 10000 crew members every day.
The CMS is designed to give transparent and accurate crew information. This facilitates the decision makers to make optimum utilization of the crew and also to effectively control the crew. Deepak Ganju further said, "This automates the day-to-day business functions of the crew thereby providing information of their status, rostering their duty allocations, providing information on the availability of crew at their home station and assigning crew to the trains." He also said that the software enables the users to retrieve information regarding the status of the crew and maintain inventory anytime during the day. Deepak Ganju added, "It is a system for management and control of crew movement that also assists managers and supervisors to optimize asset utilization.
It operates for Freight, Shunting and Coaching services and provides booking of drivers, guards, assistant drivers and shunters. It has also all the elements which make a lobby paper less namely by displaying of circular, caution, abnormality reporting, quiz for knowledge improvement of crew and crew self services. Inspectors can also monitor their drivers and evaluate their safety and operational performance."
Users can get access to the CMS central database anytime, instantly. They can access it through the net and also from their mobile phones through the SMS service. Through SMS, one can avail the functions of call acknowledgement and crew booking. This is very helpful to lobby managers as they can now get information on the location of their crew at early morning. This gives them enough time to plan for the day's deployment. The supervisor is sent alerts if there exists a shortage of crew at some location. The crew members can themselves benefit from this software. The member get have access to his personal information like status, milage, booking turn, mandatory requirements and medical information on his phone. The facility of accessing data via mobile phones gives greater transparency. It also reduces the time needed in decision making. Supervisors and clerks at the lobby have been given the typical keyboard access. The interaction with the CMS is done with the help of a touch screen kiosk.
Deepak Ganju informed, "Crew has been provided with Bio-Metric (thumb impression reader) access makes his authenticity devoid of any proxy reporting and at the same time making it legally binding. The solution becomes more user friendly as the crew has to no more remember his passwords or carry smart cards with him to log into the CMS system." The CMS can track all of the members in the database irrespective of their location. So, if the crew is on train, at the head quarter, on training, out of station, CMS can provide accurate information on each crew member. Their flawless integration with the system makes it possible for the user to retrieve necessary crew related information. The in-built business logics help the users to cut down at the running cost.
The Centre for Railway Information System has developed this application in-house with Rational Application Development and J2EE testing tools and Struts framework with DB2 database. Time synchronization, maintenance task and a range of user access requirement are used by the central location to control the client location. The application uses thin client at client location for providing great power to the central location for this purpose. Thin clients are cheaper and they also have a good life due to the absence of any moving part.
The server architecture incorporates a high degree of security for accessing different function components. The security is offered at three layers; infrastructure, application and user authentication. This gives restricted access to the software with user authentication data stored in a LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory. The solution architecture of the system is eco-friendly. The system uses thin client and TFT technology, thus saving about 2 kw of power for every booking centre. This is far better than the CRT and PC's monitor systems. The system is capable of saving 464400 units every month, when it is fully operational. This will give an annual savings of INR 2.5 crores worth energy.
The CMS can be used in many languages. It can be accessed anytime. It offers several helpful functions to assist the users in the everyday business operations. CRIS is also planning to add more features like breath analyzer synchronization, to this system after its national roll out. For this, Deepak Ganju added, "Crew before sign on has undergone to breath analysis process. The breath analyzer devices are being interfaced with the CMS system insuring greater safety of train operation."