BANGALORE, INDIA: Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) has added yet another jewel in their crown by deploying crew management system (CMS) for Indian Railways.

The crew comprising of drivers and guards are critical resources for the running of trains and their safety. CMS provides information about these crew persons at all times and thus facilitates the booking of crew on freight trains, passenger carrying trains as well as short movements within terminals and yards. 

Introduction

The Indian Railways which is one of the largest railway network of the world has nearly one lakh guards and drivers for performing train operations round the clock. In 2006 Indian Railways have decided to go ahead in computerizing their crew booking on entire Indian Railways. The task was entrusted to CRIS for developing the system and providing the system. CRIS has developed the software in-house.

The software system was rolled out in Dec 2007 and at present about 1000 data entry nodes at over 144 crew booking points have been commissioned. These are spread over 9 Zones and 30 divisions of the Indian Railways, mainly in Central, Western, Northern regions of India. By Oct 2008 another 140 locations will come up on eastern, southern and north frontier regions thereby computerizing crew booking over the Indian Railways.

The software solution 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. All this leads to better crew management.

CMS has been developed to bring in transparency and greater accuracy of information so that decision makers can take effective business decisions to control crew and optimize on crew utilization.

CMS enables its users to have instant access to information regarding the current status of crew at all times and maintain their inventory at all times. It is a system for management and control of crew movement that also assists managers and supervisors to optimize asset utilisation. It operates for freight, shunting and coaching services and provides booking of drivers, guards, assistant drivers and shunters. 

CMS users have been provided instant access to the central database not only through web based access but also through SMS over mobile phones. CMS provides immense functionality in terms of crew booking and call acknowledgement through SMS, giving lobby managers morning position of its crew at various locations enabling them to plan their deployment on trains. In case of crew shortage at a location alerts are generated for the supervisor to intervene and control it. Crew can have his personnel information on his mobile phone.