IRIS, on Its Final Stage

Interview with Mrs. Doina Olievschi, head of IRIS Project - Model Systems, Informatica Feroviara SA

Railway Journal: We have written about IRIS still since the first steps performed in order to be achieved this ambitious IT project meant for the Romanian Railways. Now, when there is quite a few up to its implementation on the entire railway network, I am convinced that there are still a lot to be said in this respect.
Doina Olievschi: I would begin by underlining the fact that we are talking here about a very complex system, implying over 30 million USD, achieved with World Bank financing, as part of the restructuring program of the railway transport system from Romania. This specification is very important because it reveals the special effort that the Romanian Railways makes in order to get modernized, in certain severe financial restriction conditions.
The compulsory need to design such a system is due to the fact that Romania should integrate in the European Union; consequently, there should be harmonized with its exigencies from the legislative, institutional and procedural point of view. And CFR should be competitive with the other railways. Certainly, IRIS Project, has as main goal the achievement of an IT system, aiming at procedural nature harmonization; it should be regarded as an "instrument" made available to the users - in this case, the railway companies CFR SA, CFR Marfa SA and CFR Calatori SA - in order to help them to offer a superior quality services.
From the technical point of view, for IRIS construction there have been adopted last hour solutions: client server applications endowed with Oracle central databases - because it is a quite complex system, with several databases-, the circulation of the messages in XML format, according to the newest practices promoted by UIC, the use of a specialized software meant for transactions management.
IRIS system, regarded in its assembly, can be presented as an integral collection of various applications, each of them being defined as complex IT systems. The part of IRIS, which is assigned to the team that I coordinate, has been achieved by in house development - with our own resources in an original concept - of the solutions, which are presently implemented. It is important to be underlined this aspect, because the solutions that have been adopted reflect the way of thinking of the railway specialists and of the IT specialists from Romania.
This type of application represents a work tool for the users, to whom there are supplied real and exact indicators regarding the unfolding of the production process. The main functions which these applications cover are: training, adaptation and launching of the trains operation program, the reporting of its achievement, the administration of the deviations from the schedule and of the dispositions for the regularization of the traffic, the monitoring of the traffic in real time, the monitoring of the exploitation activities in the technical stations and in the marshaling yards (I refer here to the technical stations belonging both to CFR Marfa and CFR Calatori), the administration of certain commercial loading - discharging activities, the administration of the contracts, of the clients and the bills of lading (related to the bills of lading, there should be mentioned that the first version refers only to the internal traffic) and the fares of the bills of lading (also in the internal traffic, within the first version).
There are five applications addressing to all three companies.
Mainly, for CFR SA there are train traffic applications. CFR Calatori takes advantage of the applications for the administration of the exploitation activities in the technical stations, for adding and removing wagons from the trains, and the rest of it for CFR Marfa and refers to the exploitation activities from the technical stations and marshaling yards, at loading-discharging activities and the administration of the contracts, of the clients, orders of wagons and bills of lading.
At the end of the last year, in fact on November, there has been started the implementation in territory of the traffic applications, for CFR SA, on the pilot-zone Bucharest - Brasov; presently, we can say that the applications have been very well received by the users and they are fully operated. We would like that the implementation of the applications at the other two big railway companies to have the same impact, activity which CFR Calatori has started in the first part of April, with Grivita station, and CFR Marfa has started at the half of April. As long as they confine to one station, the results are not so obvious, but things are going forward, nothing stagnates, everything is caught in an accelerated dynamics and, once with the extension on the entire network, the benefices will be more than obvious.
R.J.: Quite soon you will reach the moment of finalizing this project…
D.O.: Yes, indeed, up to the end of this year we should finalize the implementation on the entire network. The work agenda at this project has been quite busy; I might say that we have never work in such a rhythm and with such efforts.
Presently, besides the 22 people who are part of the designing team, there are involved in the implementation activity many other specialists from SC Informatica Feroviara, as well as from CFR SA, CFR Marfa and CFR Calatori. In the last months there have been trained, in several training centers, hundreds of future users of the system and hundreds of data processing equipment will be assembled during this year in various railway units, where there are also added complex communication links allowing the fast and safe access to the information. Yet, we cannot complain. Taking into consideration the special pressures to which the railway companies are submitted to by their clients, we are glad to be of help, by implementing IRIS, to the improvement of the quality of the railway transport services.
R.J.: Now, after you have started the implementation, their application or their putting into operation on the network seemed to you more difficult?
D.O.: Each stage of achievement of an IT project - generally speaking, I do not necessarily refer to IRIS - implies specific difficulties. The major difficulties that we met have been first of all the ones related to the design process of a system that is so new and so complex. And, automatically, the development of this concept followed by its experimentation, and, of course, by its implementation. There is also added the effort to exceed the limits, in order to employ the existing resources, which have been limited from the point of view of the persons involved, of the allocated time, as well as of the technical endowment.
Let's not forget that the work at this project has started three years and a half ago and, in the conditions of an IT evolution that is quite fast on world plan, we could not always afford to keep up with this development rhythm. Automatically, you have to employ the allocated budget.
Another difficulty is to create a unique designing team. I should specify the fact that this project is the result of the efforts of the specialists within Informatica Feroviara SA, of the specialists from the three railway companies involved and we took advantage of the technical assistance of a British consortium. The difficulty in creating a unique designing team has been manifested especially in collaboration with the British specialists. We should make them understand that not only a few technical terms, but also the practices within CFR, are sometimes different from the ones of the British system, so that the provided technical assistance to have the expected effect - to be able to shape the applications not according to the British principle, but after the Romanian one, because IRIS is a Romanian IT system.
It was not easy at all to precisely define the objectives of the project and the designing solutions together with the specialists from CFR. Because from the multitude of business functionality there should be extracted the essential and also established what should be performed first of all because there could not be developed everything in only three years and a half. We have analyzed for a year all the functions and, after that, there should be chosen the most urgent of them, the ones that will offer to the user maximal benefices as shortly as possible.
The creation of the complex architecture of this system has not been too easy; given the fact that these applications have been developed in house, all the architecture has been designed by us, within this working group.
There has followed the experimenting and the implementation of the applications. The assembling of the 2,000 PC-s and servers, all of them being interconnected in the network, and the training of thousands of users represent a great challenge. And also, dealing with a system working in real time (train traffic is never ceased), there is imposed the provision of the permanent operability of the system and the provision of the technical assistance in the conditions of permanently using the applications. Consequently, the users call us and inform us about any miss functionality occurred in the working process with IRIS applications, they call if they do not access the applications or a certain function of an application, if there are not connected to the network and so on. They call here first of all!
Therefore, IRIS should be regarded as a condensation of the summed up intelligence of the IT and railway specialists. We have worked shoulder by shoulder and the efforts have been quite special. We should write down that for the railway specialist involved in the process has been an additional activity - they have handled IRIS together with the other work tasks that they were in charge within the railway companies that they were employed with. With respect to our team, there should be mentioned that this was not too large; roughly speaking, it was compound of around 23-25 persons, with slight adjustments in constitution, because in this three years and a half many of them have left, others have come… I repeat, yet; from the numeric point of view the resources have been modest. That's why I insist on the fact that there was necessary a special effort and its achievement was quite special.
R.J.: Which are the distinctive elements emphasizing IRIS system?
D.O.: IRIS system has been conceived by emphasizing the prevalently commercial feature of the railway transport activity. The essence of CFR reform and of the directives of the European Union is that there could be performed railway losing activities, they should cover the costs and to make profit. Certainly, for the passengers' transport there are taken into account, in this respect, the subsidies paid by the governments for balancing the budgets of the transport operators. This approach makes that IRIS is one of the first railway IT systems from Europe which solves the exploitation problems from the perspective of their efficiency. It is the way through which the Romanian Railways can transform the disadvantage of the delays with around 20 years, out of objective reasons, of the IT processes, in a major advantage for other railways. At the moment of the inception of IRIS we were less dependent of the IT than other railways and we have now the occasion to make a significant step forward in this field, also with lower costs and risks.
The second feature, which gives a distinct personality to this system, is the integrated approach of the activities, no matter if it is unfolded in the various commercial undertakings, providing the data confidentiality of each company. None of these advantages could be achieved without the effective involvement of the specialists from CFR SA, CFR Marfa and CFR Calatori. The specialists of World Bank and the contract partners from Great Britain also had an important role, by working right beside us ont the system for the last three years. Not at last we should mention that the support of MLPTL, which has constantly supported the achievement of IRIS and quickened its implementation as fast as possible. Although it is only in implementation stage, IRIS system is already known in Europe, and not only. The involvement in this project of the World Bank and of the British specialists has also made its contribution. The World Congress of Railway IT and the Plenary Session of the IT Committee of UIC unfolded in 2002 in Romania had the occasion to present the system and to achieve certain exchanges of opinions on this subject.
R.J.: And which were the reactions, comments?
D.O.: They were quite good, I could even say at superlative. Generally, UIC considers that IRIS is one of the most ambitious railways IT projects from Europe, and the World Bank also recommends the way of IRIS system approaching to other railways. In the last two years, several delegations have visited our country in order to discuss about IRIS. There were also the representatives of other European railways of the developed countries, which have showed a vague distrust in our possibility to implement such a system. Which represents a real challenge indeed! It is an additional reason to demonstrate that there is possible, that in Romania can, as the Romanian specialists can, not only to design, but also to implement, and to put into operation and to use such a system, with all the advantages that are offered by it!
R.J.: Practically, what can you tell us about the first set of applications, some of them already operating at CFR SA, what offer them to the users?
D.O.: The first application -ATLAS - refers to the preparation, adaptation and the launching of the traffic program. Being helped by it, the user (in this case, CFR SA) can introduce in the network the maximal traffic program, namely the evidences during that next period (decade, day). This maximal program needs adaptations, because there is known before what trains do not operate and what supplementary trains are going to be introduced; consequently, supported by an IT tool the traffic program is prepared before the beginning of the railway workday. The traffic program is sent to all subordinated units, up to the level of stations. There, each track officer finds out the traffic program, from the computer display in front of him. And this way the second applications is put into operation - CRONOS -, through which the reporting of the traffic and the administration of the deviations from the program and of the dispositions given for the traffic regularization.
The track officer should report each train as it arrived; up to present time, this fact was achieved by pencil and paper up to now and it was reported by phone, between all hierarchical levels. Supported by the IT system, the track officer registers in the system these reporting simpler than using the paper- by typing three numbers (hour, minute and track), and, automatically, the information becomes visible at all hierarchical levels within CFR that are involved in the process.
The occurrence of certain delays in the trains' traffic implies the expedition of certain dispositions for the regularization of the traffic. They already have default texts in the system and it is clearly simpler and faster to send; they are propagating in the system similar to the electronic mail. By all means, protected, only for the users of the respective application.
The third application - FOCUS - is meant to monitor the train traffic in real time. All the reports are, of course, registered in the database of the system and appear, in five visualization shapes, on the screens available for the central traffic regulator operator and from the central traffic dispatcher. Therefore, there is a traffic format graph which our railway employees have already got used to, two table formats - one, with all the reporting about the trains and another one with the last reporting about each train -, which can be visualized by defiling on the screen. Another format has a geographical schema format, with flags indicating the position of each train. The most spectacular way to view is achieved as a schema, where the railway section is continuously represented, the stations are graphically represented, with trains shape, each with its position, no matter where they are located, on their route or in a station. The trains are presented with various colors: the ones that are included in the graph are colored with green, the ones that are delayed on a certain time interval are colored in yellow, the ones exceeding a certain limit are colored in red, expressing the need to take some decisions for their regularization.
Nota Bene: the trains are emphasized according to the operators that are administrating them and therefore there can be obtained usage indicators of the infrastructure and the performance of the traffic - quantitative indicators, regarding the use of the infrastructure by the railway operators, and qualitative indicators, aiming the traffic program.
The application number four - ARGOS - refers to the monitoring of the exploitation activities in the technical stations and in the marshaling yards and addresses to CFR Marfa, as well as to CFR Calatori. It "appears" this way: on the screen of the monitor appears a schematic map of the station as it is presented in the technical exploitation plan of the stations; on this map are presented with various symbols the types of wagons and locomotives, as well as the trains located in the station. There are also presented the units working with CFR Marfa and CFR Calatori (clients, wagon revisions, depots, repair workshops), and this way, for example in the moment of handing over a locomotive in a depot, there is manipulated the mouse on the screen the respective symbol, moving it from the station line to the depot line. The symbols are suggestive for all types of vehicles located on the map, so that, at a first viewing, there can be found out exactly which is the position of each wagon on the network, for example. Yet, on this map can be also performed searches or tracking down of the wagons, there can be simulated all activities that are developed on the field; composition/decomposition of the trains, sorting, sorting over the hump with sorting plan etc.; practically, there is not missing anything from the normal activities of a railway station.
In a similar way it is also achieved the fifth application - MERCUR: the administration of the loading - discharging activities with commercial component. Here, the user should introduce his wagon orders, fact generating in the IT system electronic bills of lading, which, to the extend of satisfying the orders, it is completed with real data, and in the moment in which the wagons are handed-over loaded to the station and the representative of the client comes to the cashier, the fare payment can be automatically performed. Therefore, the chances that the cashier makes a mistake is considerably reduced, because he has to manually introduce only some auxiliary taxes.
We are convinced, and CFR Marfa believes so, that through the implementation of this IT system there will be made more efficient the fare policy and, probably there will be replaced the multitude of existing auxiliary taxes from this moment with others, fewer, and more exact.
Within the same applications there are picked up in the system all the centralized payment contracts of the freight railway undertakings, also creating a centralized administration of the clients. Currently there are already introduced in the system around 80,000 clients.
Mainly, this is the first version of IRIS.
There are also in working stage the sixth application, for automatic guiding of the empty wagons, which, due to objective reasons, can not be introduced before the completion of the implementation on the entire network of the other five above-mentioned applications. Presently, these are implemented or are in implementation stage on the pilot - area. The three applications for CFR SA already operates since December 2002 in all the locations of the pilot - area, and the exploitation activities from the technical stations and from the marshaling yards for CFR Marfa are scheduled to begin on May.
We already have satisfactory results. Periodically, we meet with the representatives of the users in order to draw conclusions, in order to see how can the production process can be improved, on one hand, and the applications, on the other hand, to see what can be there added, what can be adjusted. I repeat: IRIS should not be regarded as a finished product, it is a dynamic project. We are aware of the fact that we have not covered yet all the possible functions, and we are aware that neither the ones that we have proposed to cover were performed according to the latest version. IRIS is an alive system, as the trading companies for which it was designed also are. It should be increased and should evolve once with it!
R.J.: I suppose that after the implementation on the entire network IRIS will remain a dynamic IT system.
D.O.: Exactly. And there should be also added these functions which in the first versions have been left aside because they did not represent priorities for the railway undertakings. Yet, they should be also implemented. This sixth application I was telling you about refers to the empty wagons guiding, and its implementation could not make sense before the implementation of the other applications on the entire network, because on a pilot-area having 34 stations and three regulators the result could not be conclusive. On the other hand, due to…limited resources, the development of this application has started later on.
R.J.: Before the creation of IRIS, the database of the railway system consisted in huge archives, made of files, registers etc. Which is the situation presently?
D.O.: Indeed, before the inception of IRIS project, CFR SA had no application to monitor the traffic. From this point of view, the application represents an absolute novelty for CFR. But there are IT applications at CFR having available databases: a BETA system, used on the entire network. There is also the old administration system for the exploitation activities in the technical stations and in the marshaling yards with an ORACLE database. It is older, in real time, but it is not a client server and operates based on messages sent from terminals, by typing a series of codes.
This shows that we already had experience with regard to the operation of the systems in real time, the Romanian Railways implementing the first IT system in real time in 1975, when there has been created the SITRAM, and the SIFRONT system has operated since 1977. IRIS has taken over the existing experience and has developed it on the ultra-modern technical platforms.
R..J.: Finally, I would ask you to focus in a few lines on the main advantages that IRIS brings to its users; how profitable will be the use of this IT system?
D.O.: IRIS system will enhance the work of its users, offering information, which can not be obtained through manual working technologies. Several advantages that I have already mentioned. I could also mention a few advantages that will positively affect the financial results at the level of CFR SA or CFR Marfa. Therefore, the automatic calculation of the transport fares will bring about benefices of hundreds of billion ROL by the correct and in time payment of the amount due for the services, the train traffic control performed by computer will lead to the reduction of the delays and at the precise and fast calculation of the incomes of CFR obtained by cashing the infrastructure use fare, the clients of the Railways will be more informed about the state and the place where their expeditions are and will know in due time the most probable moment of the arrival of the goods at the destination.
R.J.: What can you also add about the future step: the programming of the implementation activities in the field?
D.O.: I repeat: the implementation of IRIS system on the territory of the entire countries implies special efforts, because we have committed to make it up to the end of 2003! We have already defeated the skepticism of many and we have gained "our slice of glory", that's why we should succeed!
My message is: "We are…convicted to succeed!" Because it is obvious that our successes are valuable, it is obvious that they represent the summing up of a joint effort of the Romanian railway specialties. Therefore, we should succeed!

Written down by Silvia Mirea