For any railroad organisation, continuous cargo visibility is the most critical component of its physical distribution system. FOIS allows freight customers to get instant access to information regarding the current status of their consignments in transit, allowing them to implement just-in-time inventory management systems and better logistics management. It is also a system for management and control of freight movement, which assists managers to optimise asset utilisation.

This is especially important for the Indian Railways, whose key revenue earnings come from its freight traffic. The Indian Railways is Asia's largest and the world's second largest rail network under a single management. It is a multi-gauge, multi-traction system covering over 60,000 route kilometres, with 300 railway yards and 700 repair shops, and covers most of the country's vast geographical spread. The rolling stock fleet of the Indian Railways comprises 7,566 locomotives, 37,840 coaches and 222 million freight wagons. With a workforce of around 1.6 million, it runs more than 11,000 trains daily.

The problem: Declining volumes
Freight has been the key revenue earner for Indian Railways. It earned Rs 27,646.15 crore (one crore is 10 million), hauling 557.39 million tonnes (MT) of revenue-earning freight traffic during the fiscal year 2003-2004.

The market share of freight traffic had been on the decline over the last few decades, owing to improvements in road infrastructure. To arrest this decline, it was imperative to:

	Enhance customer responsiveness through cargo visibility and information dissemination
	Reduce operating expenses
	Improve asset utilisation

The size and complexity of the operations, the lack of continuous cargo visibility and end-to-end commitment to freight customers and revenue dependence on freight traffic, necessitated the development and implementation of a state-of-the-art system for freight operations and information, to assist operations and decision-making.

The Solution: FOIS
As a millennium gift to its freight customers, the Indian Railways successfully launched a computerised Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) covering almost the entire railway network. The design, development, and implementation of the system is a totally indigenous effort accomplished by CMC along with the Centre for Railways Information Systems (CRIS).

FOIS is a 100 per cent indigenous effort, uses state-of-the-art technology and is poised to bring about an IT revolution in railway management systems on a scale that has not yet been attempted in any South Asian railway system. Once all the phases and modules are integrated and implemented, it would place the Indian Railways at par with any other railway system in the most developed countries of the world.

Strategic advantages
FOIS has been designed to give major strategic advantages to the both Indian Railways and its customers:

	The current business practice of bulk movement of freight traffic in trainload formations can be extended to piecemeal traffic, to increase market share by clubbing and moving together similar types of stock in a 'hub-and-spoke' arrangement.
	Efficient scheduling and quick turnaround of rakes enables the effective and optimum utilisation of existing assets and resources.
	Global tracking of consignments is possible in real time, whether in rakes or in individual wagons.
	It facilitates acceptance of customer's orders, billing and cash accounting of freight traffic from identified nodal customer centres, which need not necessarily be the handling terminals.
	The planned extension of these facilities to the customer's premises through web enabling of FOIS. With introduction of eCommerce, customers will reap real benefits in the form of better inventory management and logistics planning.
	It has the framework for an enterprise database and information system
	It lays the foundation for a complete logistics management system, furnishing real time information on the chain of physical distribution, an essential element in reducing inventory costs.

Even in its present stage of implementation, FOIS has already improved the operational efficiency of the freight operations of the Indian Railways. In his 2004-05 budget speech in the Lok Sabha, Union Minister for Railways Lalu Prasad Yadav talked about the benefits reaped by the Indian Railways on account of FOIS: "Enthused by the success of Phase-I (Rake Management System) of the Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) which has helped in better operation and wagon availability, it is proposed to cover the commercial aspects of freight business this year by computerising the working of about 300 goods sheds and sidings. In this, the Railways' receipts will be computerised, which will benefit merchants and industry in a big way, as individual wagon tracking and electronic payments, etc, will become possible.

"Nevertheless, the Railways have surpassed their loading target with several measures to increase the availability of rakes. These measures include an improvement in the handling capacity of freight terminals, control over the number of ineffective wagons, better management of terminals through the intensive use of the Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) and impressing upon the customers to reduce detention of rakes at the terminals."

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