Team News Riveting
Kolkata, February 22
State-run Coal India Limited (CIL) on Monday entered a Memorandum of Understanding with Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an arm of Railways, to monitor movement of coal laden rakes and despatch activities.
The deal would facilitate the country’s largest coal producer for faster and customized automated access to data, through Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) of Indian Railways. The first of its kind data sharing offers CIL a bouquet of benefits that helps it in rationalizing the entire coal supply matrix through rail mode. It provides precise details of loading, weighment and unloading details along with turnaround time of rakes.
Primarily it is a handshake of freight operation information between the networks of CIL and CRIS regarding CIL’s rail movement of coal. It also includes other logistics details. The information helps minimize the instances of under loading and overloading of rakes and untangles the knots benefitting CIL, Railways and the consumers. Importantly, the resultant relevant information eases the way for faster billing and bill monitoring process replacing the manual entry of railway receipts with instantaneous online transfer.
Another high point is the data sets shared by CRIS provides CIL information on sanctioned coal and rake programmes, rake demand, rake detention and diversion details which help the coal companies plan their supplies. CIL has developed a portal which helps in sharing the FOIS data with its subsidiary coal companies.
“The pact assumes greater significance at a time when CIL is pushing for increased rail evacuation and gradually reduces the road movement of the dry fuel. The real time data helps us in better planning” said a senior executive of the Company.
As on February 20 of the ongoing fiscal, CIL’s coal movement through rail mode from its own sidings, goods sheds and private washeries at 302.51 Million Tonnes (MTs) accounted for 61 per cent of the total off-take quantity. When dovetailed with a merry-go-round system, at 92.8 MTs, which is a dedicated rail mode transport, the percentage expands even higher to 79 per cent.
“We intend to raise it further” said the referred executive. CIL and CRIS will collaborate for further improvement in data sharing with periodical reviews. The contract period of the MoU is one year with annual technical support.
