(1) Indian Railways is undergoing major organizational changes through innovative strategies and practices to improve performance, become more customer-focused, and ensure long-term sustainability. (2) Key changes include adopting a business-like approach, improving passenger amenities and safety, developing world-class stations, increasing the use of technology, and focusing on staff welfare and downsizing excess staff through retirement. (3) Indian Railways is also innovating its services through container trains, cold storage facilities for perishable goods, and using marketing strategies to better serve different customer segments.

1. 360 DEGREE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL OF
INDIAN RAILWAYS:
AN INNOVATIVE COMMERCIAL PRACTICE
Plus
APPLICATION OF BETTER MANAGEMENT
DR. SRINIBASH DASH
Assistant Professor in Management, G.M.University, Sambalpur,
Email: dash.srinibash@gmail.com

2. Introduction
 World’s second largest railway net work
 Approximately 65.000 km of rail tracks and over 7,151
railway station.
 IR owns a fleet of 2,22,379 wagons,42,441 coaches and
7,910 locomotives.
 I t turns 16,025 trains including 9550 passengers trains
carrying about 1.6 million tones of freight and about 15
million passengers daily.
 It is the biggest civilian employer in the world
 No strike in last 30 years in spite of 1.4 million workers

3. Organization Change In IR
Past Approach
 Nothing can change
 We are rail roads
 Fear and anxiety
 Restructuring and Rightsizing
 Tariff focused
Present Approach
 Passion and Integrity to change
 We are in the business of
transportation
 Hope and excitement
 Regeneration and
competitiveness
 Unit cost focused
C
H
A
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4. STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR
Turn around strategies: VISION 2020
 Provide efficient, affordable, customer focused and environmentally
sustainable integrated transportation solution.
 It shall be a vehicle of inclusive growth connecting regions, communities,
ports, centers of industry, commence, tourism, Pilgrimage across the
country

5. Services to passengers
 Passengers amenities.
 Quality of railway catering.
 Cleanliness.
 Safety and security
• Timely track renewal
• Modernization of signals like digital ultrasonic flow detecting
machines and wheel impact load doctors
• Road over bridges and road under bridges
• At least one doctor in long distances trains and ambulance services
for passengers.
• Anti collision Device.
STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR

6. World class and Adarsh stations
STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR
 Developed the quality of infrastructure which meant for international level
facilities through public private partnership.
 IR introduced drinking water, adequate toilets, catering service, waiting and
dormitories especially for lady passengers.
Multi- functional complexes
 Provides rail users facilities like shopping, food stalls and
restaurants, book stalls, PCO/STD/FAX booth, medicine
and variety of stores, retail outlay, budget hotels, under
ground parking.
Ticketing and Reservation
 Automatic vending machines.
 SMS update on waiting listed tickets and indicate berth etc
 Computerized tickets from nearly post office (MOUs
between IR and Postal Dept.)
Purchase ticket from mobile vans in the country

7. HR welfare
 Second largest employers (14 lakhs) next to agriculture.
 Implement corporate welfare plan for improvement of staff quarters and
colonies.
 Increase the contribution to staff benefit fund Rs.350.
 Scholarship for higher education of girl children of group ‘D” staffs.
 Nourishing colleges on railways land through PPP mode.
 Established special recruitment drive.
STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR
Downsizing:
 In 199,1the strength of employees were1.652 million was brought down
to 1.472 million by 2003 and to 1.412 million by 2006.
 Retrenchment strategy is to trim off excess staff.
 Adopted contemporary Business strategies means focusing on its core
competencies and Start empowering employees to take quick decisions.
 Training for empowerment of employees

8. Kishan Vision Project
 Country suffers an unaccountable loss of about Rs.35-4000 cross every
year wastage of fruits and vegetables. So IR introducing special trains
carry perishable products like fruits and vegetables
 Railways will encourage to set up cold storage facilities
STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR
Usage of Marketing in IR
 Each product’s features should be communicated to appropriate segment using
Suitable media. By product mean the different kind of services it is offering for
different segments.
 Train/station/Goods shed/container freight are basically designed for each segment
of market

9. STRATERIGIES SHOWSING THE TURNAROUND OF IR
Product Innovation
 The IR Introduced double stack container trains on some diesel routes.
 These containers increased the carrying capacity of each train to 2,500 tonnes.
 against 1.500 tonnes and also reduced line capacity and saving of about 7% capital.
 Cost and 25% in operating cost.
 Create production/marketing synergy.
 Wagonload, small parcel products ,unreserved segments need more focus instead of
depending bulk freight.
.
Usages of IT in Railways:
 Freight operations information system
 Passenger Reservation system.
 E-Ticketing
 Tickets can be issued up to 3 days in advance, hence IR’S have received
the prestigious Computer world honour 2004 for UTS that has improved
customers 'travelling experience and provided Operational efficiency.

10. Stimulus for change
Process Complexities
Technological Factors
Competition
Customer Satisfaction
Second order changes
Usage of IT in Railways
Metro Rail
Golden quadrilateral projects
Expansion of Railway Zones from nine to sixteen

11. First order Change
 Doubling of Railway routes
 Railway road kms expansion
 Phasing out of steam engines.
 Replacing diesel engines with electric engines.
 Meter gauge to broad gauge conversion .
 Electrification of routes
 Third class accommodation abolished
 Introduction of AC-2 tier and AC-3 tier coaches
 Introduction of IRCTC
 Outsourcing of maintenance operations
 Decentralization
 Human Resource initiatives
 Product innovation
 Increasing the speed of trains

12. Usage of IT in RailwaysA large complex Infrastructure System with Large
Geographical Dispersion such as the Indian Railways can
benefit greatly from the intelligent use of IT
E-GOVERNANCE OBJECTIVE
Freight revenue enhancement
Passenger revenue enhancement
Improvements in Customer and public service
Investment optimization
 Transforming Transport through Technology
 Jewels in the Crown
-Freight Operations Information system ( FOIS)
-Passenger Reservations System (PRS)
-Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)
-Instant voice response system (IVRS)
-Rail Net
-E- Ticketing

13. E-governance measures in Passenger
Business - PRS
Computerization of passenger
Reservation has been a success story
for Indian Railways.
In 1984-85, a Pilot Project was
implemented at Delhi and later
replicated at four other sites
Secunderabad, Chennai, Kolkata &
Mumbai. System set up at these
regional centers took care of trains
within their area of jurisdiction
Mumbai
Delhi
Calcutta
SecBad
Chennai

14. Freight
Operations
Information
System
FOIS
An on line real time
system for management
and control of freight
traffic
User driven
design and
implementation
Foundations
for a total
logistics system
Instant access to
information regarding
status of consignments
in transit, for just in
time inventory
Assists in Asset Tracking,
Asset Planning
Performance Monitoring ,
to optimise Asset
utilisation

15. Unreserved Ticketing System-UTS
Tickets can be issued upto
3 days in advance
Indian railways introduced UTS
to improve customer
satisfaction, revenue
generation, accounting, and
reporting capabilities and
reduce fraud
System is proposed to be extended
progressively on all zonal railways
The work load involved in
printing , accounting and
issuing tickets to this mega
segment has been a difficult
task
Indian railways have received the prestigious
computer world honour 2004 for UTS that has
improved customers’ travelling experience and
provided operational efficiency

16. Resistance & overcoming Zonal change
Resistance to change
 New railway Zones creation opposed by six retired chairman of
the Railway board
 Displeasure of “The Rakesh Mohan Committee” and “Controller
and Auditor General “
 Various questions were raised about the plans and expenditure
Overcoming Resistance to change
 The Supreme court of India dismissed the petitions challenging
the decision of the government

17. Conclusion
“It is not the strongest of the species that
survive, nor the most intelligent, but is the
one most responsive to change.”
“Revolutions don’t last, but Evolution does”

18. DR. SRINIBASH DASH
dash.srinibash@gmail.com