Control system in Indian railways workshops (Periodical Overhauling of Coaches)

Abstract

Indian Railways (IR) is one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world and an important form of public transportation in the country and has been contributing significantly to the growth of national economy. At present, the Indian Railways has40, 781 coaches. There are 45 Carriage and Wagons Workshops all over the Indian Railways carrying out the Periodical Overhauling (POH) of these fleet of coaches in these maintenance workshops. The cost of POH (Periodical Overhauling) levied on average is about 5 lakhs per coach by the workshop carrying out POH on the Coach owning railway. Considering the volume of about 40000 coaches over the entire Indian Railways the expenditure on this activity is approximately 200000 lakhs which is 2000 Crores rupees of expenditure annually on POH of Coaches by Workshops. Hence a need to study this activity in IR workshops was felt. Also workshops are concentrated centres of workforce with about one third the total Indian Railway roll strength and IR spends50% of its revenue expenditure on salaries. The research was carried out by carrying out study at Hubli and Mysore Workshops of South Western Railway which can be considered as representative sample of the 45Workshops.In the research the prevailing transfer price mechanism in IR Workshops for the major activity of coach maintenance (POH) and the interrelated Management Control System is studied. In the study the following issues within IR workshops are analyzed: 1. Unit Cost of POH at Workshops 2. Manpower in Workshops 3. Incentive system in Workshops 4. Cycle time and Transit time 5. Capital Expenditure 6. Segregation of Repair and Manufacturing activities in a workshop. Management Control issues that are required to be addressed by IR management are brought out in the Conclusion.