OREANDA-NEWS. January 13, 2016. Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu inaugurated Implementation of E-enabled Track Management System (TMS) & Mobile Application of TMS on Indian Railway and Track Inventory Management System on Northern Railway at Rail Bhawan, New Delhi. The Minister of State for Railways Shri Manoj Sinha was specially present on the occasion. Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K.Mital, Member Engineering Railway Board Shri V.K. Gupta and other Board Members, and other senior officials were also  present on the occasion.

Speaking on the occasion Minister of Railway Shri Suresh Prabhu said that this system is a great digital India initiative of Indian Railways is an excellant example of e governance. In his Speech Minister of State for Railways Shri Manoj Sinha said that Railways Engineering department has done a commendable job in developing this system .

Management of track maintenance involves handling of huge volumes of data statistics as well as dynamic analysis of various measurement and defects and planning, deployment of large resources.

Hitherto, this entire gamut of activities has been largely manual. The technical field staff i.e. the permanent way engineers, have been spending precious time in record keeping and data mining with maintenance planning. In the absence of updated field data, track maintenance planning remained mostly periodic or subjective. Unless these systems are changed, maintenance costs will go up exponentially with the increase in traffic density and ever increasing demands for high speed. 

In order to bring efficiency and effectiveness in management practices, Railways felt the need of e-enablement of track maintenance practices on Web-Enabled IT platform.

E-enablement of Track Management System (TMS) is an important milestone in promoting e-working in civil engineering department of Indian Railways. It is being implemented on all the 68 divisions of Indian Railways. With its implementation, various activities of Track Inspection, Monitoring and Maintenance have come on IT platform. This system is designed for decentralized data capturing, speedy information dissemination along with centralized data keeping and analysis. It provides alerts in the form of SMS and E-mails to all concerned, right from Jr. Engineer in field upto the Railway Board.

TMS Mobile Application has also been developed to use this system on mobiles and tablets to view certain important exception reports. This will prove to be useful for senior management and for officials on the move. 

Track Store Inventory Management for such a mammoth widespread system is an important facet of Asset Management. This application covers all the track inventory holding units in the country numbering more than three thousand. All of them have been linked on one platform. This will enable optimization & balancing of inventory and speedy disposal of scrap and thereby increasing earnings from this source.

Apart from improvement in system efficiency, these will also have intangible benefits to the humanity in the form of environment protection by reduction of carbon footprint which is a global cause of concern at present. The system will contribute significantly to planet earth by removing more than 1.0 lakh registers related to track maintenance. This will result in saving of close to 500 trees a year.

BACKGROUNDER

E-enabled Track Management System(TMS):

·         Various activities of Track Inspection, Monitoring and Maintenance have come on IT platform.

·         Being implemented in balance divisions of Indian Railways, now covering all 68 divisions.

·         Designed for decentralized data capturing, speedy information dissemination along with centralized data keeping and analysis.

·         First of its kind Organization Wide Asset Management IT Application.

·         Covers complete working of track maintenance at all levels from JE (P.Way) in field upto Railway Board.

·         Requisite infrastructure like Netbooks/mini laptops along with requisite Internet connectivity/mobile data cards provided to all JEs and SEs. 

·         Will eliminate more than 1,00,000 manual record keeping registers and make this area of working almost paperless.

·         Database and application servers established in CRIS Data Center at Delhi.

·         All information being available 24x7 on web enabled Applications.

·         SMS and E-mail alerts being sent to all concerned, right from Jr. Engineer in field up to Railway Board.

·         Extensive data base related to track will enable intelligent analytics and perspective planning to become possible in a more effective and meaningful manner.

 

·         TMS Mobile Application developed to use this system on mobiles and tablets.

·         Very useful for senior management and for officials on the move. 

·         Important information and reports made available on this which includes rail fracture analysis, IMR welds, overdue Ultrasonic testing, track machine working reports & Engineering Control’s morning position etc.

 

E-enablement of Track Inventory Management System on Northern Railway:

·         Huge amount of highly spread over stores inventory to be managed by Track Engineers of Open Line & Construction Department.

·         More than 3 thousands inventory holding units in the country being linked on one platform.

·         Will enable optimization & balancing of inventory and speedy disposal of scrap.

·         Pilot implementation successfully done on complete Northern Railway.

·         Track materials inventory of Northern Railway uploaded for its entire 225 units of Open Line, Construction and track machines organisation.

·         Inventory of 130 units of open line optimized resulting in inventory reduction by 27000Metric Tonne amounting to saving of Rs.648 million and scrap identification of 22000 Metric Tonne amounting to Rs. 528 million.