Provide tablet computers to signal staff for faster failure analysis: Western Railway to divisions

New Delhi | The Western Railway has asked its divisions to provide tablet computers to junior and senior section engineers for streamlining signal maintenance and faster failure analysis.

In a written communication dated August 12, the principal chief signal and telecom engineer (PCSTE) of the Western Railway urged the divisional railway managers of six zones -- Ahmedabad, Mumbai Central, Vadodara, Bhavnagar, Rajkot and Ratlam -- to make arrangements for tablet computers for signalling and telecom (S&T) supervisors as their workloads have gone up due to the implementation of the Signalling Maintenance Management System (SMMS).

"The SMMS has been implemented across WR (Western Railway). Currently, a total of 3,01,650 signalling assets of Western Railway have been registered in SMMS, and the daily average maintenance entries are in the range of 30,000, in addition to signal failures entries," the letter read.

"The data entries in the Signalling Maintenance Management System (SMMS) are to be made daily at the SSE/JE level for both failures and maintenance activities. New additions and alterations in the SMMS database of existing signalling assets are also a regular activity to be performed at the field level," it added.

The letter pointed out that there is no established mechanism currently for doing these entries in the SMMS and in most cases, the staff are using their mobile phones for data entry, which is inconvenient, cumbersome and error-prone.

"This is resulting in a regular backlog in entering the data into the SMMS. To assess data from SMMS and facilitate the failure analysis from SMMS, tablets are required to be provided to the concerned JEs and SSEs on similar lines as has been done for TMS (track management system) in the engineering department," the letter read.

"In the case of the TMS, all P-way supervisors have been provided with tablets. Therefore, for the SMMS, the tablets of similar configuration should be provided to the S&T supervisors within the divisional power," it added.

The Indian Railways S&T Maintainers' Union wrote to the railway ministry last month, requesting for tablet phones for the S&T staff for the latest procedure of maintenance after the introduction of the SMMS.

"As S&T department has drastically changed the procedures of maintenance of S&T gears and introduced advanced and online techniques of maintenance and introduced SMIMS online based maintenance system, there is now an urgent need for tablet phones to S&T staff," Alok Chandra Prakash, general secretary of the union, said in a letter dated July 9.