Automated crew booking at Ind Rlys

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.

For data entry at client (lobby) locations standard keyboard access has been provided to the clerks and supervisor using the system. However, the crew interacts with CMS system through touch screen Kiosk. Crew has been provided with BIO-Metric (thumb impression reader) access which makes his authenticity devoid of any proxy reporting and at the same time makes it legally binding. The solution becomes more user friendly as the crew no more has to remember his passwords or carry smart cards with him to log into the CMS system.

CMS provides for global tracking of all the crew on the CMS system in real time whether the crew is on train, resting at HQ, resting at outstation, on leave or training. It provides for their seamless integration with the CMS application so as to enable user to derive benefit of crew accountal at all time and enable its user to cut down running cost with the help of built in business logics of the CMS system.

The technology

CMS is a web-based application which is operational on an internal WAN of Indian Railways. The application is an in-house development of CRIS developed using rational application Ddvelopment and testing tools in J2EE, struts framework with DB2 database. It utilizes thin client at a client location giving immense power from central locations to control the client location by way of maintenance task, time synchronization and varity of user access requirement.

Thin client are not only lower in cost but also have a better life since they do not have moving parts.

The solution architect for the CMS solution is environmental friendly and has been designed in such a way that the CMS uses the TFT and thin client technology which saves nearly 2 killowatt of power for each crew booking locations over the conventional PC's and CRT monitors based system. This system when fully functional shall save 464400 units per month which shall result in an annual saving of INR 2.5 crores per annum energy conservation.

Smart initiatives

Crew management system software has a number of smart initiatives to support train crew in their day-to-day business functions. It is a 24 x 7 role based, multilingual application having the following smart initiatives.

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 no more has to remember his passwords or carry smart cards with him to log into the CMS system.

The crew interfaces into the CMS system using user friendly touch screen Kiosks.

CMS users have been provided instant access to the central database 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 their 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 personal information related to crew mileage, crew status, turn of booking, mandatory requirement, medical information on his mobile phone.

Crew before sign ON has to have breath analysis. These devices are being interfaced with the CMS system insuring greater safety of train operation.

To break the monotony of crew while waiting for their turn at the crew booking lobby a quiz has been provided.

Surbhi gupta, Asst.Software Engineer, CMS, CRIS