Information Technology for Railway Management
- Railways all over the world progressively implements Information Technology for improvement in efficiency and for better management.
- Computerised Management Information System (MIS) helps in planning, monitoring and decision making of all modern Railways.
- On IR the development of a system for availability of information on freight operations as an aid to decision making was mooted and first sanctioned in 1983-84 as due to the sheer size and complexity of freight operations the management of freight operations was highly complex.
- Central Organisation for Freight Operations Information System (COFOIS ) which was later replaced by Centre for Railway Information System with a wider scope.
- A prototype of Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) application software comprising Rake Management System (RMS) and Terminal Management System (TMS) was developed by CRIS and implemented in Northern Railway in 2000.
- RMS covered various operational functions relating to routing, tracking and yard activities and had seven submodules while TMS covered the commercial activities pertaining to goods’ sheds such as generation and accounting of Railway Receipts etc and had 11 sub-modules.
- This system is indigenously developed and at present fully functional on Broad Gauge system.
- CRIS also maintains the Systems for Unreserved Ticketing System(UTS) and Passenger Reservation System(PRS)
Integrated Database Management
- Development of an integrated MIS through a Data warehouse comprising Unreserved Ticketing System(UTS), Passenger Reservation System(PRS) and FOIS is proposed.
- The proposed system will boost efficiency. Development of application have been distributed among three pilot projects with an aim to make optimum utilisation of available recourses and to implement the project in a time bound manner with pilot sites at Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi Divisions.
- The project is designed to develop and implement functional modules on the pilot sites and replication of same all over the IR in a phased manner.
- The project is designed to meet the information needs of Managers at Divisional, Zonal and Board levels.
- So far the computerisation on Indian Railways have been in customer related areas like Passenger Reservation(PRS), FOIS, National Train Enquiry System(NTES) etc and some other areas relating to payroll, financial management and inventory and the work done is mainly from the EDP centres attached to Divisional, headquarters offices.
- In order to develop a really integrated and comprehensive information system useful to all level of management , it is necessary to have computer based applications of all underlying activities covering all departments like Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Signal and Telecommunications , Security, Medical etc.
- In order to complete this herculean task in a time bound manner the work is segregated to the pilot sites and modular approach is done for developing functional modules for each department.
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