Freight customers will soon be able to track and trace their goods down to the wagons in which they are being carried as the Railways plans to install RFID tags in all its coaches and wagons.
Besides making cargo movement reliable, the move could help the Railways pitch for and partake in the e-commerce boom, a growth story that it has largely missed out so far.
One reason why the Railways has decided to fit tags is because the they are significantly cheaper, priced at almost a third of what they cost just a year ago.
“Now, the prices of RFID tags have dropped. The rugged tags that Railways will be putting in the rolling stock will cost approximately ₹300. This makes it possible to cover the entire rolling stock — passenger, freight trains and locomotives — with RFID tags. The Railways has some 2.8 lakh wagons, 70,000 coaches and 11,000 locomotives,” Mukesh Nigam, Managing Director, CRIS, an autonomous body under the Railways, told BusinessLine.
“ The Railways has sanctioned ₹113 crore to buy 365 fixed RFID readers, tag 2.5 lakh rolling stock, create infrastructure for reading of tags, associated software etc. The fixed tag readers will be fitted along the tracks of various zonal railways. An inter-departmental committee of officers in the Railway Board is deliberating on the routes on which the readers will be installed,” Nigam said.
The move will enable the Railways provide more granular information, particularly when each train carries cargo of multiple customers. There are also cases of parcel cargo in coaches or container wagons, when products of multiple customers are loaded in each wagon or coach. The Railways has also had talks with e-commerce and logistics players to move their cargo and plans to run parcel trains regularly on certain routes.
E-commerce market
India’s e-commerce market is expected to grow at 36 per cent annually between 2018 and 2023, four times the growth of the retail market, estimates Bain and Company, with Amazon, Walmart-Flipkart and Alibaba-PayTM eyeing a bigger pie of ballooning consumers.
“As each loaded wagon contains high value materials, there are problems in tracing individual wagon in case it gets detached from the rake enroute to its destination. In terms of maintenance practices too, information is required to be kept wagon-wise about their profile and maintenance inputs,” he added.
The current freight operating information system — designed by CRIS — is based on monitoring of rakes (entire trains) and the present digital platform is not built to validate details of individual wagons. “The tags have to be rugged and tough, be in hardy covers that can battle heat, dust and extreme temperatures, shocks/vibrations etc. They have to be fastened in a manner to ensure they can’t be removed/stolen easily,” said Nigam adding, “These will be passive tags, which can store information and on which information can be updated. The RFID tags will be fitted along the sides of the rolling stock. All RFID tags and readers will be compliant to GS1 standards and will be certified by accredited agencies.”
The Railways aims to cover its vast fleet over the next two years. It is fitting RFID tags on new wagons and plans to tag existing wagons when they go for routine maintenance — which happens once every 18 months, said Nigam.