Railway CMS (Crew Management System) - Digital Transformation Case Study

The Indian Railways is one of the largest railway networks in the world, with 65,000 km of route, 7,500 stations, and 25 million passengers and 2.8 million tonnes of freight carried daily. Its 60,000+ loco pilots and 40,000+ guards operate more than 10,000 train runs every day.

The Challenge

The management of these 100,000 trained workers is important for the overall health of the Indian Railways. These workers have irregular schedules, yet they operate very heavy and dangerous equipment. Their health, alertness, training and general well-being are therefore of the utmost concern. At the same time, the Railways must make the best use of this experienced workforce.

The Solution: Crew Management System

CRIS and Thinvent jointly developed the Crew Management System to address this need. This centralised software handles the scheduling, training, and sign-on and sign-off of these workers. It provides an interface for communicating technical issues (such as problems in the track or locomotive) as well as personal issues (leave application, grievances).

The system also improves the security of the Railways by requiring biometric authentication of each worker before and after their shift, and by testing them for alcohol consumption.

Technical Challenge

Thinvent had to develop a 24×7×365 system that is easy to use for people unfamiliar with computers, yet robust and feature-rich enough to support their migration from existing paper-based systems.

Requirements

  • Touch screen kiosk interface

  • Indian language support

  • Web and SMS interface

  • Completely Linux-based solution

  • Biometric authentication of users

  • Alcohol breath test on sign-on and sign-off from duty

  • Clustering and high availability of servers

  • 500+ locations across India

  • 24×7 operation

Products Used

  • Linux-based firmware for thin clients and kiosks with extensive GUI customisation

  • Biometric authentication with low FRR and FAR, and local caching of IDs

  • Customised breath analyser hardware and software for automated testing

  • High-throughput SMS interface on servers

  • Remote management through web interface

  • Centralised updates of thin clients

  • Clustering, load balancing and centralised monitoring of servers

  • Business Intelligence tool

Results

The CMS project is in operation across the Indian Railways network. Its uptime, the reliability of its clients and its features have earned the CMS project several awards.