Enabling Business With IT at

The Indian Railways

Submitted By :
Anubhav Kumar (10ESPHH010019)
Sadab Alam (10ESPHH010005)
Bhaveshkumar Jain (10ESPHH010016)
Ragesh Nair (10ESPHH010008)
The Indian Railways (IR) is a truly great
institution.
It is a global giant that operates profitably,
effectively
and with relatively little government support.
MCKINSEY &
COMPANY
Agenda
Business Strategy and Role of IT
Background Of Indian Railways (IR) in early 2000’s
Need For IT
Rakesh Mohan Committee
IT recommendations of The Committee
IT initiatives by The Indian Railways
Details about some important IT initiatives of IR
Benefits Of IT
Performance of IR during the last decade
Future IT planning of IR
Vision of the IR Up to 2025
Business Strategy
A business plan defining:
The company vision;
The strategy and tactics that will enable the company to
reach those objectives;
The resources required, and how they are going to be
obtained;
What the main milestones and steps are along the way;
Who is responsible for causing each step to occur;
What are the company's business risks and external factors
that need to be kept under review for indications that a
change in strategy or plan may be required.
Role of IT
Provides a means to increase the efficiency of the
organization. In the Railways also, this will be the
case.
Two-fold role of Information Technology :
Role 1: an information highway
To provide information across the organization where
and when required.
Role 2: a personal productivity tool
To increase personal productivity at all levels.
Six Stages of IT Introduction (by Nolan)

Initiation
Contagion
Control
Integration
Data Administration
Maturity
Background
World's second-largest Railway
6,853 stations
63,028 kilometers of track
37,840 passenger coaches and 222,147 freight cars
4.83 billion passengers and 492 million tons of freight annually
11 million passengers climb aboard one of 8,520 trains each
day, about 550,000 have reserved accommodations
Declared to be heading towards bankruptcy as per the Expert
Group on Indian Railways in 2001
Is today the second largest profit making PSU after ONGC
The Rakesh Mohan Committee
 Set up in 1998 to find ways of making private investment in
the cash strapped Railways
 Submitted the interim executive summary on the 17th of
February to the then Railways minister Ms. Mamata Bannerjee
 Report made recommendations on reform in the following
areas:
 Pricing strategy for Freight and Passenger services
 Restructuring the entire approach for Investing
 The various options open to the Railways to finance its investment
 Utilization of IT for restructuring the railway’s operations.
 Reinventing the entire organizational structure of the railways
The Rakesh Mohan Committee
(contd.)
The following were the chief recommendations of
the committee with regards to the application of IT
for Indian Railways: 
Freight Revenue Enhancement
Passenger Revenue Enhancement
Operational Cost Reduction
Initiatives to improve its Decision Making
Key IT Initiatives by Indian Railways
Passenger Reservation System (PRS)
Ticketing
TTE's Hand Held Terminals Project (HHT Project)
Unreserved Ticket System (UTS)
Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs)
Integrated Coach Management System (ICMS)
Freight Operation Information System (FOIS)
Integrated Train Enquiry System (ITES)
Rake Management System (RMS)
Terminal Management System (TMS)
Parcel Management System (PMS)
ERP for Human Resource Management System
IT Projects of IRCTC
Benefits of IT
Reservations can be carried out anywhere at any point of time
Real-time information to citizens, freight customers and
passengers
The implementation of new strategies have led to
improvement in overall system reliability with an increase in
applications availability due to reduced downtime.
Cost Savings – provides low cost of ownership and requires
less maintenance
Time savings – reduction in time required to prepare
reservation charts by 50 %; reduces backup time; drastic fall
in the queue waiting time
Performance of IR
Future Initiatives
Crew Management System (CMS)
e-Payment of Freight
Associating with banks for the issue of e-Ticket from their ATMs
Initiatives are being taken  for booking tickets through call
centres. 
Safety Systems (GPS, Embedded Systems)
GIS based Track Maintenance Systems
Vision and Roadmap Up to 2025 of
Indian Railways
Four Aspects of Vision 2025 :
 Commitment
 Planning
 Funding
 Resources
Roadmap for the Vision 2025 :
Period 1 (2005 to 2010) : Automation
Period 2 (2010 to 2015) : Synergy
Period 3 (2015 to 2020) : Global acceptance
Period 3 (2020 to 2025) : Integration
Thank You!
Questions?
Passenger Reservation System
CMC Software company developed IMPRESS an online transaction
processing in 1985
IMPRESS became operational in 1987
The current software is CONCERT,
implemented by the Centre for Railway
Information Systems (CRIS)
At more than 1,400 locations and
more than 5,000 terminals
Handles more than 3,000 trains, involving more than one million
passenger transactions per day
Consists of 2.5 million lines of code, involving complex business logic.
Supports 1 million reservation/cancellation/modification transactions
and 10 million enquiries in a day
Passenger Reservation System
(contd.)
Response time of less than a second for
local transactions and less than three
seconds for network transactions
Supports both graphic user interface (GUI)
and character-based terminals
Designed as an open distribution system
Secured against intrusion by two-level
user authentications
Data encryption facility to prevent hacking
Substantial savings in transportation costs and in reservation time
Substantial reduction in cost per ticket issued, manpower savings, savings in
space required, less strenuous work, higher productivity and fewer errors
CONCERT
(Country Wide Network of Computerised
Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing )
1 64 KBPS  Integrates five Regional
Leased
Line6
Reservation Centres
CRIS 1 2MBPS
Delhi Kolka
 Judicious mix local
Leased line
2 MBPS 1 64 KBPS
(x2) PRS
Leased ta
Leased Line6
PRS
Line
1 2MBPS autonomy with uniformity
Leased line
of business rules.
64 KBPS
Mum (x2)  Very complex Business
bai Leased

transactions.
Line
Secunder
PRS64 KBPS 64 KBPS
Leased Leased
Line
abad
 Comprehensive
Line
64PRS
KBPS
1 2MBPS (X 2)
Leased Leased
line Line
functionality
Chenn
ai PRS
Ticketing
Mobile Ticketing
Web Ticketing
Kiosk-Based Ticketing
Centralized (Hybrid) Ticketing System
TTE's Hand Held Terminals
Project (HHT Project)
TTEs to be provided with a Handheld Computing Terminal (HHT)
Linked to the Central Reservation Computer through
a wireless network (GPRS provided by Bharat Sanchar
Nigam Limited)
The application software for the first phase has been
developed and internally tested
On-train testing has been conducted on New Delhi-Lucnkow ,
New Delhi-Amritsar and Kashi-Vishwanath Shatabdi
TTEs of the Amritsar Shatabdi route were given training and
hands-on practice in a workshop organised by CRIS.
Unreserved Ticket System (UTS)
UTS was started on 15th August 2002
Computerized unreserved tickets
to railway passengers from
dedicated counter terminals,
automatic vending machines, and
other venues
Cross-counter cancellation of tickets
issued from any station, and advance
booking of unreserved tickets up to
3 days
Also enables fare enquiries
Functioning at 2882 counters on 892
locations as on 2nd October 2007
Around 23,000 UTS are expected by
31st March 2009
Automatic Ticket Vending
Machines
ATVM is a part of the Unreserved
Ticketing System (UTS)
Passengers can book unreserved
tickets through ATVM by using
smart cards
Designed by CRIS using NXP’s
MIFARE DESFire technology
Based on the international ISO 14443A
standard
Objective is to reduce queues at manual
ticketing counters and drive process
efficiencies
Integrated Coach Management
System
The ICMS modules are hosted on central servers located in
CRIS
Accessed by remote locations via the Freight Operations
Information System (FOIS) network
There are 338 terminals from 196 locations connected to ICMS
Has 3 Software Modules:
Coaching Stock Management Module. It tracks status and
utilization of individual coaches
Punctuality Module. All reports produced manually are made
available online
Maintenance Module
Freight Operation Information System
FOIS is an online transaction processing
based application providing a 'track and
trace' solution for account of cargo,
freight and rolling stock assets
Assists managers for monitoring and
management of assets for optimum
utilization and providing timely information to
the customer for supply chain management
Comprises of two modules - Rake Management
System (RMS) and Terminal Management
System (TMS)
Has three-tier client server architecture using
RDBMS,  Middleware and Front-end
System generates more than 1200 reports
Rake Management System (RMS)
RMS captures the following events in
real time:
 Customer indents
 Wagon supply - date and time

 Departure after loading

 Running particulars - arrival/departure

at stations enroute with attachments or

detachments if any
Arrival at destination

 Handling and delivery at destination

Terminal Management System (TMS)

Deployed at around 500 locations

Expected to cover all major handling terminals to issue
online Railway Receipts (RRs)
Facilitates invoice based consignment tracking, instant
RR generation and track instances of
unconnected/wrongly delivered wagons.
Has provision for booking consignments from
customer centres.
Parcel Management System
Computerization of parcel services at
seven stations sanctioned in September
2005
Software developed for the project by
CRIS
 Full scale implementation completed at
New Delhi and Delhi stations in June 2007
Enables end to end tracking of parcels
(from booking to delivery) through
bar coding and automatic capture of
weight from electronic weighing machines.
ERP for Human Resource Management
System

Planning to introduce Human Resource Management

functions through IT platform
On a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) basis
The adoption of BOOT model will spare Railways from
making heavy upfront investments
This is the first software project for the Railways to be taken
up on a BOOT basis.
Help serve its 1.4 million employees and 1 million
pensioners in a better manner
The project has specially designed component on e-Learning
Integrated Train Enquiry System (ITES)
Based on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model
Assigned to IRCTC jointly with CRIS
IRCTC is responsible for implementation and management of the project
CRIS is responsible for Architecture and Technology and back end
integration with PRS and National Train Enquiry System (NTES).
ITES consists of four centres (North, South, East and West) to handle
calls
Each centre consists of a Zonal Hub (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and
Howrah) and a call centre
Enquiries  are accessible from all telecom service providers
Access to these services by making a local call  throughout the country. 
IT Projects of IRCTC

Web Based Rail Reservation

System www.irctc.co.in
Launched in the year 2002
Sale of tickets has reached to 45,000 tickets
per day from few hundreds
More than 40 lakh registered users
Biggest e-Commerce site of India
Also designed a tourism portal 
www.railtourismindia.com  which
facilitates online booking of tourist trains,
cab booking, train booking and hotel booking
facilities.