Corporate Information Management Case Study on Railway Reservation System Group Members Pavan Verma (pavan10p@iimk.edu.

u.in, eMEP-10-018) Rakesh Kumar Lenka (rakesh3e@iimk.edu.in, ePGP-03-061) Ranjit Jacob K (ranjit3e@iimk.edu.in, ePGP-03-064) Senthil Kumar Natesan (senthil3e@iimk.edu.in, ePGP-03-080) Sridhar Gopalakrishnan (sridhar3e@iimk.edu.in, ePGP-03-084) Introduction The objective of this case is to study the dilemma faced by technology managers at Indian Railways (IR). Although, the old Passenger Reservation System (PRS) is timetested, reliable and serving the customers needs for nearly two decades, it is now proving to be inflexible to match the changing business requirements. The key question discussed in the case is whether the IR should completely replace the old PRS with a new state-of-art system, or should it continue using the old PRS system making incremental enhancements to it. Executive Summary We summarize the information given according to three classifications below. In later sections, we present details of each data item.

1. DIKW Analysis
Wisdom Knowledge Information Data ,, ,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,

2. Qualitative and Quantitative Data Analysis

Qualitative Data Quantitative Data ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,

3. Operational and Informational Data Analysis

Operational Data Informational Data ,,, ,,,,,,,,,

Details of data presented in the case 1. Data Indias economic growth has taken a sharp upturn from 5% in 1980s to 7% in 2003-2004. Its passenger traffic is growing at 6%; low-cost airlines have started to compete with the upper end of the railway passenger segment. The information comes from these data is The market is getting competitive, so IR has to change the business rules in order to retain customers. 2. Data PRS is written entirely in C and dependent on a mainframe operating system. When any upgrades are introduced, the cracks began to show in PRS. Changing the old Transaction Processing monitor software was a tedious job. The information comes out of these data is: Too many changes in the program logic, demanded all at once, could seriously destabilize the PRS as it existed today. The present technology platforms were obsolete and needed to be changed. 3. Data The new technology being considered for adoption was component-based architecture in place of the decade old, monolithic application architecture. The information comes from the data is this technology would provide the application with much needed flexibility to change with changing business rules, enabling IR to respond quickly to passenger needs. 4. Data The new technology being considered for adoption was RDBMS-based data management, in place of the older file-based data management system being used. Information The flexible data structures possible with an RDBMS core would greatly enhance overall application flexibility. 5. Data PRS handles well over 1 million transactions everyday. Information There will be a huge public backlash in case performance of new system is not up to the mark of the existing system. 6. Zero and Low Value data a) The train was introduced in India 1853. In India, road transport is generally restricted to 250 km and air transport was limited to big cities. IR is a government agency. There are two budgets presented in India parliament every year general budget, and railway budget. IR currently has 63,140 route kilometers of rail track, over 8000 railway stations, and employs around 1.4 million people.

b)
c) d)

e)

f) g) h) 7.

IR currently handles around 16 million passengers per day (almost 6 billion originating passengers in a year) in over 9500 passenger trains. CRIS was set up in 1986. PRS was started as a pilot project in 1985.

a)

Data Growth Of Total Passengers Traffic in Railways Table 3 given in the case study material. Similarly the growth of Passengers by Mail and Express trains are given in Figure of the case. The given graph in case study material is converted into tabular form below. Year 1950-1951 1960-1961 1970-1971 1980-1981 1990-1991 2000-2001 2004-2005 Number of passengers (millions) 77 111 171 271 376 512 645

b)

Knowledge applied to get the information

The market can be segmented on the basis of usage. Most of the travelers that use Mail and Express trains make reservations
before traveling. Others travelers who travel on local trains dont need to make reservation in advance. They take the ticket just before traveling. c) Information from the data applying the above knowledge:

There are two segments of customers.

o

Those who travel by mail and express trains may have to book ticket at any originating station in the country to any destination from its 5000 terminals placed in over 1350 locations across the country at any time. The second segment consists of travelers who travel by local train. They can book tickets only from the current booking station to the destination station just before travel.

 The growth rate of total travelers from 2000-2001 (4833 Million) to 2004-2005 (5516 million) is 14%. The growth of travelers who travel by mail and express trains increased by 26 % in the same period from 512 million to 645 million. The growth of travelers who travel by local and unreserved berths increased by 12 % in the same period from 4321 million to 4871 million. So the traveler who travels by reserved category is growing very much faster as compared to other segment of passengers. 8. a) Data The original software for the Passenger Reservation System was written in FORTRAN. It uses simple and robust host-based architecture and low-cost VT-100 compatible terminals. The Volume and Complexity of PRS system are as Table 6 given in the case study material. b) c) Knowledge The knowledge about the benefits of advanced software language and architecture Information By applying the above knowledge to the above data, the information is FORTRAN language and host based architecture can not handle the growing volume and complexity of train reservation system properly.

9. Data CRIS had just set up a very successful website for passenger inquiry (currently, the passenger inquiry website experiences over 6 million hits per day during the peak travel season). The unreserved segment, thus far being serviced through manual card tickets and stand-alone SPTMsa (self-printing ticketing machines), has started being addressed by the centralized unreserved ticketing system (UTS). The upsurge in Indias economic growth had enhanced the service expectations of passengers. Competition from low-cost airlines and long-distance road travel, which was unimagined in the past, became a reality. 10. Information There are two different views in implementing new technologies for the reservation system: P.R. Chandran, head of the IT Directorate in the Ministry of Railways and Punit Kumar, the executive officer to the Minister for Railways has a view that the present technology platforms supporting PRS were obsolete and needed to be changed. P.L. Gaur, head of the PRS group, Amrita Agarwal, technical head of the PRS group in CRIS, and few others has the view that its not good to disturb an already functional system. They wanted an incremental improvement in the current technology to support the increased functionalities.

11. Information Ramasundar knows that if he decides to support for the wholesale switchover to a new system, he has to consider lot of factors such as: core technology to be used overall architecture of the system software architecture of the system security aspects cost and time schedules migration strategy

12. Information - The transaction time was 2 minutes 5 years ago and has improved to 3 seconds today. 13. Information Objectives of PRS given in Table 1 of the case study document. 14. Information Impact of PRS implementation given in Table 2 of the case study document. 15.

a)
b)

Data - PRS needed 4 hours a day for data consolidation and backups. Knowledge The knowledge of advanced hardware available in the market Information - After applying the knowledge - The daily maintenance window, could be further compressed by using better hardware.

c)

Recommendation for the decision We recommend the decision of incrementally enhancing the capabilities of the existing PRS to serve the emergent dynamic requirements of IR customers because of the following reasons: 1. Changing over to a DBMS will prove to be very expensive; the benefits are questionable. 2. The platforms needed to be changed, but a steady evolution was the need of the hour, without destabilizing the existing PRS. 3. While passengers would demand more avenues for reservation services, the need could be met without disturbing the core of the system.