Enterprise Architecture (EA) is a framework for conducting analysis, design, planning and implementation of the vision, goals, strategies, functions, activities and desired outcomes of an enterprise, using a holistic approach at all times, such that the IT infrastructure and IT services are always aligned to the business strategies and business services, through standardization and integration. The real value of Enterprise Architecture is not in making better architectures… it’s in making a better enterprise. The number of practical applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) has grown exponentially over the past few years. Right now, the Internet of Things pretty much means the ability to interconnect all those objects and devices that didn’t previously have a network connection. As a result of bringing these unconnected devices onto the network, it enables applications that increase safety and ease of use. Connected Railway projects are an excellent example – applying the Internet of Things to trains for improved safety, operational efficiency, and the passenger experience.
Enterprise Architecture is quite relevant to the Railway operations in India. EA enables a systematic and holistic development of a portfolio of Governance in Railways and to provide integrated services to the Railway system, its stakeholders, clients and passengers by way of building a 360-degree view of services across all its touchpoints. The central theme of Enterprise Architecture in Railways is to provide “just enough” structure, which can be created “just in time” to meet the transformational requirements of the transportation sector. Railways since the introduction of electric traction was introduced at the beginning of the last century, is now viewed as one of the greenest ways on Earth of moving people and property. It is now experiencing a fantastic boost of expansion, innovation, investments, and popularity as the Railway Minister is envisaging investments to a tune of INR 8,50,000 Crore over a period of next 5 years. Hence it is necessity for Indian Railways now to look for an Enterprise Architecture to achieve futuristic goals.
Every year, Indian Railways transports billions of passengers and billion tons of freight. As traffic grew, IR’s biggest challenges were creating more capacity, maintaining the existing rail network sustainably, and decreasing expenses. Hence IR must know its business success is relied on making its IT systems more efficient and cost-effective. To reach these goals, IR should now focus on improving IT strategy through a Railway-wide Enterprise Architecture program, by making a suite to document and analyze the actual IT IT landscape. The initiative will consolidate and improve IT resources to meet business needs, and significantly reduce expenses in a short term.
The heavy use of IT and networking technologies are completely redefining how trains will be run and managed in the next twenty years. Silicon is getting increasingly more relevant every day as the industry begins to understand how the so-called “smart rail” initiatives can deliver million of dollars of savings and, at the same time, save the lives of many people who die each year in rail related accidents.
Safety has always been a major concern for railways. Speed and weight can make a train a very dangerous moving object whose braking distance is measured in miles. Therefore, its motion needs to be controlled and predicted as much as possible – last second reactions typically do not avoid accidents. Signaling vendors like Siemens, Alstom, Bombardier, and Ansaldo STS have been developing highly complex and secure systems to remotely control trains and avoid accidents. The level of automation and sophistication in train signaling is extremely high compared to other segments of the transportation industry. For example, almost 100% of the metro lines that have been constructed in the last five years are fully automated and driverless. Moreover, most of the existing trains in Europe have a driver but are able to brake based on remote signaling without any intervention from the driver. Railway companies understand that increasing automation is a necessary step to increasing the safety of their systems. According to various Railway Safety reports/enquiries including the U.S.Federal Railroad Association (FRA), human error accounts for more than 60% of all rail-related accidents. So clearly there is still significant room to increase automation and reduce accidents due to human error.
There are three major systems within Railways where automation and the Internet of Things can bring significant benefits: signaling, interlocking, and level crossing control. Signaling systems control the movement of the train and remotely control train speed and braking. More traditional signaling systems are based on RFID along the train track, but wireless train to ground signaling is getting more and more common both in Railway and Metro Rail systems. For example, most of the new European High Speed Rail Systems are equipped with ETCS Level 2 – a signaling standard that requires constant radio communication between the train and the group. Based on the ETCS 2 standard, such radio communication is accomplished using the GSM-R technology with BTS installed along the track of the train. Interlocking, on the other hand, avoids those conflicting movements on the tracks at junctions and crossings by using red and green light signals. The interlocking system works in conjunction with the signaling system to prevent a train from getting a signal to proceed if the route is proven to be unsafe. Interlocking today is already implemented as a software-based system with a complex design that ensures that the highest degree of safety and the integrity level of all the vital functions is reached-SIL 4. But, the Internet of Things can further improve the system’s level of automation and its integration with the signaling system.
Level crossings control is the third system that impacts safety on railways. According to the European Railway Agency (ERA), 619 accidents occurred at level crossings in 2010, causing 359 fatalities in the European Union that year. (2009 stats show 831 level crossings-related accidents caused 405 fatalities that year.) Accidents related to level crossings represent 30% of all railway fatalities in the EU. Fluidmesh has been involved in some IoT projects for level crossing safety and it is impressive how technology can significantly improve safety in such an old system like a level crossing. In one project, an European Railway system have been able to stream live video from cameras controlling a level crossing to the approaching trains, therefore showing to the train driver if somebody is trapped on the level crossing. The Railway system there have integrated such a video streaming system with a Funkwerk on-board cab radio monitor that was already installed on locomotives equipped with the ETCS standard in Europe. Another interesting level-crossing automation project involved using thermal imagers to automatically detect people along the train track who might be trying to unsafely cross the track. Integration of video, radar sensors, and thermal imagers is an excellent IoT application to save lives at a level crossing.
Beyond safety, the Internet of Things is creating the opportunity to enhance the operational efficiency of railways. For example, the automation of toilets can significantly reduce the cost incurred by the train operator and, at the same time, provide a better service to passengers who will less likely find a toilet out of order. Currently, most train operators are unable to determine the status of the on-board toilets in real time and a significant amount of manual checking is required. Another example of an IoT application to improve operational efficiency is related to the management of the video recordings on board. Many rail operators have to send personnel on board their trains to manually pick up the hard drive when video recordings are requested by a law enforcement agency for investigation of an incident. Fluidmesh has been involved in many Connected Train initiatives to provide live streaming of video or automated off-loading when the train gets to a station or depot. Automating video offloading from the on-board hard drive to a central data center provides a significant saving in the amount of time spent in chasing trains to retrieve recorded video and, at the same time, allows them to keep relevant evidence for longer period of times. Automating a train’s restaurant car can also improve efficiency and is another excellent example of how the Internet of Things can improve operations. Food and drinks can be easily refilled at the upcoming station if data is available in real time regarding the items sold. Moreover, temperature can be remotely controlled to avoid issues with refrigerators that might not be working at all times but whose temperature is critical to preserve the food quality over time.
Operational efficiency means moving from scheduled maintenance to predictive and preventive maintenance. Predictive and preventive maintenance can dramatically increase the percentage of times a train is in use rather than sitting in a maintenance or repair shop. It can also improve the passenger experience and their safety. For instance, train wheels need to be controlled and maintained regularly due to wear. Braking, and emergency braking in particular, accelerates wear on tires and therefore the need for maintenance checks. Slips and sliding of a wheel can even require immediate maintenance because the wheel can be seriously affected. Additionally, different sections of the tracks wear the wheels in different ways and times because of peculiarities in the track geometry itself, such as with steep or sharp turns. By tracking exactly the path of a train every day, its braking actions, and the sliding and slips of wheels, a train operator can develop an extremely precise predictive model that will tell the maintenance staff when to check a train and when to send it in for maintenance. Recording and processing the history of interventions of the ABS systems can tell a lot about the condition of the wheel profile and the consumption of the brake pads. The time between maintenance stops wouldn’t be based on averages that might be too conservative in certain cases and waste money or, on the other hand, are not conservative enough, putting operation and safety at risk. By leveraging big data analysis techniques and the Internet of Things, railways are able to measure and track real operational data, perform maintenance at the right time, and predict their maintenance needs precisely.
An improved passenger experience and therefore an increase in ridership is another goal of many Internet of Things project for railways. Based on several railways surveys with passengers, connectivity is the major need of passengers on board trains today – they want a better Internet connection on board. The goal of most high-speed trains operators over the next five years is to allow a seamless connectivity experience on board. Passengers should be able to leave their home and jump on a train without affecting their Smartphone connection. Increasingly more passengers bring multiple devices on board with them and want to either work or entertain themselves using their own devices. Train operators now understand that broadband Wi-Fi on-board translates into a significant increase in ridership and are investing tens of millions of dollars to enhance their passengers’ experience. Broadband wireless train to ground technology today is able to connect a train delivering up to 100 Mbit/sec, and the industry is already working on designing train to ground wireless solutions that will be able to scale to 1 Gbit/sec in the next five years.
The opportunity for Smart Rail projects and application of the Internet of Things to Railways is massive. According to a recent press release from Cisco, almost $30B will be spent in the next 15 years on the IoT projects in the railway industry. Despite the significant size of the railway industry already, an average of $2B per year invested in Smart Rail and Connected Train projects will enable a revolution both in the way railways are managed and in the experience of passengers on board. Silicon will start being a much more relevant element in this 200 years old industry which has for so long been dominated by steel.
New Challenges Call for New Direction
With the Enterprise Architecture program, IR can manage growth efficiently and cost-effectively. The system can deal with capacity and peak-load issues, maintenance needs, and a desire to improve customer communications. IR’s IT landscape, having grown without coordination, there is a lack of transparency and application portfolio management meant that there were many redundancies, as well as unknown or unmanaged application interfaces leading to expensive IT maintenance costs, excessive downtime, and low data quality. It is also not supporting larger business goals very well currently. IR’s challenges were even more complex because it is necessary to keep operating expenses in line with reasonable fare prices. Costly improvements might solve operating issues, but large operating budget increases could cause fares to rise too high. On the other hand, expense reductions should not compromise services.
The Enterprise Architecture program realises that IR understood much less of their IT systems than they thought. Information is being kept in spreadsheets, less than adequate for the complexity of the operation. There was no meaningful way to avoid outdated information, duplicate applications, and inefficiencies. The unplanned stoppage of so many trains, along with other challenges, demonstrated the need for centralized, up-to-date information about the entire IT infrastructure, how it meets the business needs, and how elements in one area could affect others.
Comprehensive EA Solution Required
Indian Railways should initiate a formal Enterprise Architecture program to drive IT improvements in order to provide important information for decision making, service improvements, and cost reduction. A more efficient IT system would advance on-time performance, railway maintenance, and communications, particularly at the time, when the business process modeling software was in limited use currently and is unable to meet comprehensive goals for the new programs. IR needs a sophisticated EA software solution that could provide a complete understanding of operations and IT systems. This new software had to meet numerous criteria, including flexibility, ease-of-use, adaptable reporting, and the ability to customize to IR’s specific situation. It had to support users throughout the system and centralize the most critical information on IT and business operations in a single, reusable format. As a government entity, IR should go through the prescribed procurement process to consider various alternatives, several options, and careful analysis.
EA Capabilities in Creation of Information Resource
Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution for Indian Railways can improve business performance. These organizations deploy a full range of the Suite’s tools to describe, record, analyze, and control vital information about business processes and resources. This comprehensive information is then used to anticipate market trends and make better business decisions, as well as reduce costs and corporate risks and a way to align business needs with IT resources to be certain that the IT systems were efficient and cost-effective.
Indian Railways should document the as-is state of the IT systems, including more than 1,000 applications. System interfaces also needs to be documented, as well as the platforms and technologies on which these applications run, and information on which groups used various applications and which business processes were linked to each application. EA can create a central repository of information, as well as a Web portal that is accessible throughout the Indian Railways for business users. Indian Railways should rely on the EA repository as the single point of truth for the organization. It contains documents, diagrams, designs, reports, IT service descriptions, forms, templates, and all information on roles, people, and issues to be kept up-to-date meticulously and continuously. The EA will market the value of the portal and repository internally… posting the latest news on what’s available on the screens in the IRCTC’S Coffee Shop as well as via email… as a way for everyone to get accurate and comprehensive information that is important to their own job. The portal should have one page for every application. Through it, users can access information relevant to their jobs and notify the EA team about incorrect information, ask for exceptions from standards, or alert them to problems, wherein the Web portal should have maximum page hits each month and most users from IT operations and support, or business development units use the information for strategy and organizational change.
The EA team should consist of atleast 25-30 people, a separate unit of architects under a CIO, who also should oversee the IT operations team of approximately 800 people. The entire Indian Railways’ IT environment should be divided into 15-18 domains, each with 150 applications. Each domain should have its own architect who plans and monitors all changes to those applications. The rest of the team should work on tooling, the as-is and to-be views of the system, and handle requests. Based on the as-is picture prepared, Indian Railways should create a five-year IT plan, using a to-be view of future needs and expectations. This plan should show applications that will be retired and those that will be acquired to meet evolving business needs, and could be revised each year and should be the basis for the IT project portfolio. Annual budgets are then built from the IT plans.
A five-year EA program on Indian Railways can help run a Leaner and Smarter IT operation and will contribute to better customer services and a plan for the future.
Meeting Challenges, Reducing IT Costs
Indian Railways should evaluate the success parameters of the EA program in several ways details below:
Currently, the IT budgets rose as services expanded. However, the trend has reversed, with the IT budget now shrinking.
Before EA enabled company-wide IT information, the IT team would deliver all requests, creating redundancies. Hence, it is possible to see whether a pre-existing application can fulfill that need or not. When one group request a CRM application, the EA team identifies an existing one. The net savings will be huge on the project and for operating costs.
The EA team shall use key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, they look at the percent of applications running on standardized platforms vs. those on non-standard platforms. They also track the number of applications; the goal will be to reduce business critical applications in the next two years.
Due to EA, transparency will be one of the major accomplishments IR will have. Supposing a goods train is derailed, and the wagons are rendered scrap by the concerned departments, and are sent to a Wagon Shop, then it will not be possible for an RPF Inspector or anyone else, to steal the scrap and sell it and no record speaks of it. Hence select elements of the company’s business processes and IT resources used to be known to individuals or small groups here and there can see processes and assets across the organization, understand their relationships and dependencies, and look ahead to what is needed in the future and what is needed to be done at present. The EA program provides comprehensive and essential information for critical business and operations decisions.
IR Can Focus on Future Improvements
Indian Railways can next focus on improving data architecture once the EA is implemented. IR can plan to begin with a common vocabulary, essentially create a Wikipedia type resource for Indian Railways, so that words are interpreted the same throughout the organization. It will then expand mapping of the as-is state with regard to where data is stored. It will help reduce errors that affect operations. For example, when people sold tickets, data errors were much less visible. Now, with 80% of tickets sold in automated vending machines, information errors are much more apparent to customers. In the long term, Indian Railways can extend its success in IT cost reduction to operations. One of the other largest IR challenge is maintenance of tracks, tunnels, and bridges. Consolidating facilities information that is now kept separately, such as original tunnel building accounts and tunnel temperature records, can help the maintenance group better assess and control operations.
INFORMATION CENTER - www.informationcenter.co.in
