Indian Railways has decided to introduce computerized crew booking at the crew lobbies. Based on the demand form the users CRIS has developed Crew Management system (CMS) which not only to perform the traditional tasks of booking crew on all types of trains but also brings in, transparency of information sharing, cost optimization and keeps it’s users up to date for taking effective business decisions.
Continuous visibility has always been viewed as the most critical component of any physical distribution system. CMS enables it’s 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 to optimise asset utilization.
CMS is not only confined to freight services but has all the components needed at any crew booking point, namely Shunting and Coaching services. It has also elements which make a lobby more or less paper less namely display of Circular, Caution, quiz for knowledge improvement of crew and crew self services. Loco inspectors can also monitor their drivers for and evaluate their performance.
The software has capabilities to be customized for each lobby giving flexibility to end user as and at the same time integrating all the lobbies together. It has a powerful SMS module to support the user in terms of crew booking through SMS, morning position, crew shortage alerts, crew personnel information, crew milage, crew status and many more functionalities
As on March 2008, about 700 data entry nodes, over 300 crew interaction KIOSKs have been commissioned at over 110 lobbies spread on CR, WR, NR, WCR, NCR, SCR and NWR. Work has been started on SR and SCR now and it is targeted to cover entire I.R. by Sep 2008. As in March 2008 over 5000 crew are being booked through the CMS system daily on freight, coaching and shunting services.
CMS is an in-house development which has been designed by dedicated team of CRIS to give strategic advantages to both Indian Railways as follows:-
Global tracking of crew of all the crew on the CMS system in real time whether the crew is on train, rest at HQ, rest at outstation, on leave and 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.
CMS has WEB enable reports which are available to all the FOIS network users. The reports are transparent to all it’s users and enabling the business decision makers to access these reports at all times and take business decisions based on the transparently available statically information.
Future Approach: CMS is working on the following modules and are expected to be release during 2008 – 09. These modules are Breath Analysis, Biometrics and Abnormality reporting by the crew
