RAILWAY APPLICATION PACKAGE

Modules in the form of JAVA Applet

Konkan Railway has gone in for an IT enabled model of working. The system involves computerisation of all aspects of working of a railway system. The data capture is as the action takes place and subsequently provides information for better decision-making and improved utilisation of assets. With this the management can do fact based planning, track performance and take better care of customer. This is called Railway Applications Package.

This Railway Applications Package includes a comprehensive package of seventeen modules for day to day working of all the departments. The modules cater to all the basic jobs to be done by the personnel of each department. This enables not only the automation of the basic activities but also capturing of the data at the action points. It is much beyond a transactional processing system and does the decision making also. All the modules are tightly integrated with each other.

The RAP consists of tightly integrated 17 modules for all the departments in a Railway System. The brief functionality of each module is as described below:

1. Financial Accounting Module :

This module gets its input from the Financial Accounting and the Traffic Accounts modules and preparesthe annual balance sheet.

2. Annual Accounts Module:

This module gets its input from the Financial Accounting and the Traffic Accounts modules and preparesthe annual balance sheet.

3. Traffic Accounts Module :

This module gets input from the Commercial Coaching and the Commercial Freight modules and gives output to the Financial Accounting module. The module keeps the account of all the monetary transactions at a station and prepares station level balance sheet, Part A, Part B and 6A Part 1 & Part 2 reports. Apart from recording the accounts this module deals with the apportionment of the traffic interchanged with other railways.

4. Expenditure Authorisation Module :

This module deals with the registration and processing of proposals. It also has schedule of power built into it.

5. Commercial Coaching Module :

This module deals with the basic commercial activities for the passenger stream of the traffic. It automates all the process like ticketing of all type, management of allied activities like retiring rooms, luggage booking, cloakroom etc.

6. Claims & Compensation Module :

This module deals with the processing of the claims on both the coaching and the freight sides. It interfaces with the Commercial Coaching and the Commercial Freight modules on the input side and with the Financial Accounting Module for the payment of the claims.

7. Commercial Freight Module :

It takes care of the entire chain of the freight movement starting from forwarding note, indenting, allotment, and placement, loading & unloading of wagons. It prepares Invoice & RR and also calculates demurrage and wharfage.

8. Operations & Train Control :

This is one of the flagship modules. It takes care of all the activities in a control office and at the stations. It is an online system, which gives a total control over the operations and transparency to all the support departments. It has a planning interface where traffic planning can be done with what-if analysis. It has a sub-module for accident management also.It is very tightly integrated with the modules of all the engineering departments.

9. Personnel Management Module :

It deals with the entire gamut of working of the personnel department. It starts from attendance, leave, and issue of passes, seniority and promotions, transfer, house allotment in nutshell. It also takes care of payroll, Discipline and Appeal Rules cases.

10. Electrical Maintenance Module :

It takes care of maintenance of train lighting system and AC coach maintenance. General service maintenance and tunnel ventilation (which is specific to Konkan Railway) are also apart of the system.

11.Signal & Telecommunication Maintenance Module :

It covers preventive maintenance scheduling, preventive maintenance activity itself and its monitoring, failure analysis, telecommunication asset maintenance and telephone bills monitoring.

12.Track & Structure Maintenance and Control Module :

It pertains to inspection, maintenance and repair of civil engineering assets which include permanent way, bridges, tunnels, station buildings, service buildings, and staff quarters.

13. Rolling Stock Locomotive Maintenance Module :

It caters to various activities carried out in a diesel loco motive shed. It includes planning of maintenance schedule, schedule and unscheduled maintenance, loco planning for traffic, maintenance of spares and account of fuel and lubricating oil.

14.Rolling Stock Carriage & Wagons Module :

It handles all the activities concerning examination, maintenance, and repair of the C&W stock. It also keeps the status of individual coach/wagon in the system.

15. Health Management Module:

It takes care of all the activities of a health unit starting from registration of patients, examinations, lab tests right up to the issue of the certificates. It also used for Ambulance services, referral services, account keeping of the medicines and the equipment and National Health Programmes.

16. Stores & Inventory :

It automates the complete process from the receipt of indents to placement of P.O. on the system. It also takes care of procurement of stock materials, goods manufactured on work orders, uniforms and disposal of scrap.

17. Security & Administration :

This module deals with the security of the entire system. It is further used for the administration of all the modules, to provide a very secure and integrated computer system.

Connectivity :

All the 53 station servers are connected to the Central server at the Corporate Office at Belapur, Navi Mumbai. They are in the star configuration through 19.2 KBPS channels using V.24 technology over the KR owned Optic Fibre Cable, which runs throughout the length of KR. The networking protocol followed is TCP/IP. Each station server has been given a unique IP address. The cable has been dropped at alternate stations. The non-dropping stations are connected through leased line modems on PET quad cable

Hardware :

The hardware on Konkan Railway consists of different types of Alpha servers and associated dumb terminals. M/S Compaq supplied all the hardware. The servers at Corporate Office, Belapur are connected with all the stations. The Central servers are Alpha 2100 and ES 40 of Digital and Compaq respectively. These two servers ensure database replication. (Hard disks are in RAID 5 configuration to provide data redundancy through mirroring). The station servers are Alpha200 servers. Some additional servers are there at the Corporate Office. They are Alpha 300 and 400. Some of the other servers are used for Office Automation, Running ERP Programs, Running time Computation, Model Network, Intranet etc. There are in all 74 servers and 600 terminals and about 100 PCs in the system.

Operating System:

Digital UNIX Version 4.0F has been used as the operating system. It is a 64-bit operating system.

Database :

Informix 7.30 On Line Server has been used as RDBMS engine. Informix On Line Server works at the Central Database Server and Informix Standard Engine works at the Station Servers. Approach of distributed database has been adopted to share the load between the Central servers and the station servers. This sharing also gives redundancy because it enables the station servers to continue to work even if there is no communication with the central server. The central server uses an Informix online engine and the station servers use an Informix standard engine. Only the relevant data is transferred from stations to the Corporate Office.

Disha Konkan Railway Internet:

Using Linux and Java, Konkan Railway has a rich Intranet in place called Disha. Disha is accessible from any where on the entire Konkan Railway. It has sections for the software and technical manuals and books, bulletin board, Employees’ home page etc. Disha also has database access using Java Servelets and JSP. 



                            Display of the Trains as they move along the Konkan Railway

The trains move automatically on the display as the train timings are fed by the stationmasters. All the details about the train can be obtained by clicking over it. Station layouts can be also be zoomed.

Time-Distance Control Chart

This chart gets plotted on its own as the timings picked up automatically at the stations through the track circuits. The plot has a past (yellow portion on the left of the current time) and a future (white portion on the right of the current time). The crossings and the precedence of the trains are planned by the system based on the logic fed in the program. The crossing messages are automatically communicated to the station masters on their terminals.

Updated as on 01/12/09