Railway Asset Management for Madurai Division

Abstract

Asset management is the way of managing assets optimally such that they serve throughout their design life with minimal cost expenditure and maximum benefits for satisfying the organization’s business goal. Railways are one of the major assets of the nation and nearly 4192.21 INR Billion capital investments have been made to Indian Railways (2012-2017, XII five year plan). Indian Railways contribute 2.5% to Gross Domestic Product of the country. Unfortunately the current financial health of Indian Railways is under crisis and corrective measure is the need of the era. Asset Management is widely been used by the Indian Railways but no specific framework has been framed separately for Indian Railways considering the Indian scenario. Hence, the role of Infrastructure Engineers greatly plays in improving this tool for the growth of the nation. In this study, major key cost drivers and sub-cost drivers identified by the international union of railways were studied and they were measured for the sixteen sections under Madurai division and the variations were found. Using analytical hierarchy process all the cost drivers was ranked and the importance of the cost drivers was found hierarchically. A framework was designed with the help hierarchy and the sections were ranked and the section which needs more maintenance with respect to more number of assets was found.