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The introduction of Freight Operation Information System (FOIS) has been a major turnaround for the Indian Railways. FOIS has helped in policy modifications for freight trains that have, in turn, helped the railways generate more revenues. It was the implementation of an integrated FOIS application that enabled the railways to revolutionize its freight train movement, management and transaction. In a way, FOIS has played a vitol role towards the transformation of the railways into a profitable organization over the last five years.

A Win-win Proposition
The Indian Railways carries a huge variety of goods ranging from mineral ores, fertilizers and petrochemicals, agricultural produce, livestock, iron & steel among others. Ports and urban areas have their own dedicated freight lines and yards to ensure a smooth running of freight and passenger trains. Among them, major freight stops have dedicated platforms and independent lines.

The Indian Railways makes 70% of its revenues and most of its profits from the freight sector. Since the 90s, it has switched from small consignments to the movement of large containers, which has helped speed up its operations. Currently, most of its freight earnings come from carrying bulk goods such as coal, cement, food grains and iron ore.

Earlier, the inability to run traffic efficiently and to manage its operation in a disciplined manner acted as a major constraints for the railways. It consistently faced severe shortages of rolling stock for carrying all traffic and serious constraints in line capacity for moving the traffic.

Realizing the significant contribution that information technology could make in improving the utilization of rolling stock assets, the railways introduced computerization in its various capacities within the freight operations. In the early 70s the advance transmission of CONSIST between yards was attempted. However, the inherent limitations of the hardware available at that time and the non-availability of reliable communication lines limited its functioning. The administrative issues and political developments of the 70s, which were responsible for stagnancy in computerization, also played a major part in further delaying the introduction of computers in freight operations.

It was in 1986 when the railways decided to go for an integrated computer communication system in the form of FOIS with an objective to computerize all information relating to operational activities, and monitor the performance of all activities connected with freight traffic management. Therefore, FOIS was initially introduced to cater to the internal customerthe operation department. Gradually, it was expanded, and presently, it is reaching out to the end-customers as well. The entire freight train operation as well as all kinds of commercial transaction are now automated and are online.

Being an information intensive organization, it is very important for the railways to ensure the availabilty of updated information to all stakeholders on a real-time basis. The entire operation and controlling is based on the available information that is generated through FOIS. Apart from handling operation of freight movement, FOIS also provides various transactional facilities to freight customersfrom booking to loading or unloading of goods, to any commercial transactions, including payments.

FOIS is the first project that was handled by CRIS. Initially, the railways had implemented packaged software, called Total Operating Systems (TOPS) that was developed by the US and was based on IBM mainframe. This implementation was done around 1991 as a pilot project for the Northern Railway. However, the project failed to serve its purpose because by the time it was implemented, the underlying technology became obsolete. It was only in 1996 when the older version of FOIS was recalled and the current version, designed on modern technology platform with scalability options, was developed and implemented.

Nitty-gritty
FOIS consists of two major modulesRMS and TMS. Rake Management System (RMS) provides a system for ordering freight trains and tracking freight rake movements. It was first deployed in 2002 at over 237 strategic locations across the country, covering control offices, yards and interchange points. RMS has enabled vital functionalities including monitoring of loads, raked and trains; monitoring of locomotives and wagons; BPC particulars for CC and non-CC rakes; demand management; loading; and en-route attachments and detachments.

The second phase of implementation has been Terminal Management System (TMS), which was deployed around 2005. TMS provides a platform enabling all types of commercial functions of freight terminals, including indents, forwarding notes and allotments; commercial cycle for loading; generation of computerized railway receipts (RRs), and consignment delivery and account of freight. During its initial phase, TMS has been deployed over 600 locations. Now its been under expansion and is targeted to be implemented in total 2,000 locations in order to make the system more effective and productive. The initial deployment of the basic application was later followed by a payment gateway. This was also introduced to make it a fully integrated system, dedicated to freight trains that would take care of both operational and commercial functioning. Today, about 36% of freight payments are made through electronic payment gateway (IREPG) by over 175 major freight customers.

A new modulereferential file management (RFMS) modulehas further been sanctioned by the Railways Board to provide a common set of master data relating to all rolling stock for freight train operations.

FOIS has helped better turnaround of wagon movement cycle, reduced terminal detentions, increased loading, and enabled an efficient management of freight unloading. It has further helped the railways to identify the constraints and design policies to improve or solve them. On the other hand, IT has also availed timely feedback on how the new modules have been working, based on which further improvisations have been done. This analyzing capability, based on FOIS data, has helped improve the overall productivity of freight operation. With an improved freight train service in place, cargo movements can now be tracked easily. Consignees, too, keep track of their goods, and plan accordingly. Since freight trains are very important for transporting bulk and perishable commodities like food grains and livestock, this improved service has not only smoothened the supply of these products, but also has reduced their wastage during transport.

The implementation of FOIS has also brought transparency in the overall system that was very important for the railways to function efficiently. It has also helped the railways increase its revenue drastically over the last five years, around 8-10% YoY, without incurring any extra operational cost or increase in resources.

Further Plans
In order to obtain an enhanced operation management and services structure, the railways has undertaken several other projects that are currently in the pipeline. Once deployed and integrated fully with FOIS, these applications would allow a more robust system for increased efficiency in freight train operation and management.

Currently, freight maintenance management module (FMM) is being undertaken as a pilot project to improve productivity of the freight wagon maintenance process. It will interface with FOIS to provide seamless flow of information from operations to the maintenance function and vice versa. The Indian Railways Operations Center (IORC) is also part of the FOIS project. It is planned as a central facility with a data center and an IT operations center.

Further, a data warehouse is being set up for all these operational systems, starting with the FOIS system. In addition, a remote DR system is being established for FOIS and its related applications. Interchange of data with major partner organizations, such as SAIL and TISCO is also being taken up in order to improve the service provided to these customers, as well as improve the internal efficiency of all partner organizations.

Another important aspect is parcel movement through the railways that is potentially the fastest and most cost-effective method of carrying small consignments across the country. A pilot projectof a computerized parcel booking, delivery, and tracking systemhas been implemented in ten stations across the Delhi-Howrah corridor. Complete rollout of the system at over 200 stations has been sanctioned by the Railways Board, and is being under implementation.

While electronic weighing machines with an interface to the parcel management system is already working, bar coding of parcels for efficient tracking is being planned in the rollout phase. Implementation of modern warehouse management systems (WMS) for parcel offices is also being considered for making them more efficient and productive.

All these recent developments have undoubtedly sought to boost the earnings from freight. A lot has improved since the introduction of these modern technologies. A systematized approach towards freight operation and management has lead to streamline its overall train management efficiency in addition to extract handsome profits. However, there is sill scope for further innovation and improvement that would further strengthen and streamline freight train management and services.

Piyali Guha
piyalig@cybermedia.co.in

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