Technical documentation management
- a modern archiving method -

 

The quantity of the existing designed and archived documents in our new railway system are raised presently to over 5,000,000 samples, all material supports (at A5 format - 148 x 210 mm, to A0 - 841 x 1,189 mm), and, unfortunately, most of them being in different stages of degradation. As a curiosity, we found out that, only for a locomotive, the drawings, repair evidences and other data occupy a whole case.

In order to enhance the access to the multitude of the data has been taken over and adapted a data technology program by IT Center of CFR-SA, together with ICL firm, within the well-known IRIS Project. Named The Management of Technical Documentation, this program consists in the creation of a data base, with the possibility to transfer the documents, on demand, in the regional servers.

The main tasks of this interesting application are: archiving of technical documentation of the entire fleet of rolling stock in the country, editing and distributing the documentation demanded by the repair workers and the constructing companies of rolling stock or other Railway services, data refreshing and archiving new documentation.

All these will be accomplished with the help of the product named Meridio (from Ireland), which is composed from a server and a plasmon (optical memory) which has the maximal capacity of 500 Gb. The information are saved on optical disks, Meridio owning 105 disks that can be used simultaneous, and in the case when some of them are accessed very rarely they can be replaced with others and saved in a special library.

Meridio offers facilities, which allow the localization of a folder from the system, the search being done according to the properties of the document or according to the word or sentences contained by it.

Extremely useful is the possibility to access various versions of a document in order to know the evolution in time of a certain type of railway machinery, for the achievement of various statistics, useful in the settlement of some working strategies.

Meridio is in installation phase at the Technical Documentation Service within "CFR Calatori" and will comprise in the end a scanner, a graphical station and several working stations. Although "CFR Calatori" owns it, the program has been designed to serve all railway companies resulted from SNCFR division. Additionally, for the homologation of various repairing, constructing or railway service providers units, these ones need the technical documentation from various sectors: rolling stock (locomotives and various types of wagons and coaches). Romanian Railway Authority (AFER) requires this according to an order of the Minister of Transports, and Technical Documentation Service is the only one in the position to grant them assistance. After the stocking in the administration system, the documents will be available for being accessed anytime, on a few accessing rights basis. The late spoken about will be granted according to an access policy well established within the technical documentation department and implemented later on. The program will offer searching functions, administration of the versions and control of the access based on the rights of every user.

Meridio application also offers the possibility to send by e-mail various documentation accompanied by messages to certain receivers, as, for example, the repairing factories of the rolling stock that need the documentation designed and written for the locomotives or of the wagons that are sent to them for repairing purposes. Another advantage offered by Meridio is that of keeping, on demand, all the versions and modifications brought to a document in a very short time, thus being possible to see the evolution, for example, of a locomotive plan since the designing phase till the eventual annulment of this.

The scanning of the documents, cleaning of the obtained images represent the operation most delicate using certain programs for the rehabilitation of the graphical elements destroyed on the paper. The processing process of the scanned image in order to transfer it to a vector format will be accomplished through the projection application ACAD, together with a supplementary mode of vectoring, GTX. Due to the big number of documents that are going to be saved, the stocking space will be an optical library called plasmon. This equipment will be administrated by specialized software (DiskXtender). The system also comprises a plotter that will allow printing stocked documents. For every user with visualization right, the documents will be accessed with a program, according to Windows settings.

Technical Documentation Service exists for over 50 years, informed us its current leader, Mr. Teodor Ionescu, while it was provided designed and written documentation necessary for the exploitation activities, maintenance and repairs of the engines and hauling rolling stock, assistance and technical consultancy based on the archive that is administrating it. In the multitude of the existing documents there are also unique samples on national plan, of a great importance for the Railway, as well as for the economy of the country, generally.

Classical mode in which the archive is organized supposes the existence of a few written documents (technical books, exploitation and operation guides, etc.) and designed documents (bogies, wheels, axles, various equipment, etc). These ones are on the staff recorded, localized and identified in the registers and evidences which correlate their content with the place where they are archived, enhancing even a non-professional to identify a certain document. In the database it also exist in written base, classified and catalogued, a collection of all the national regulations (national standards, norms and technical specifications), a series of specific foreign standards and, additionally, all UIC files used in the railway system from Romania.

Presently, as we have already told you, a great part of the designed documentation is old and degraded, passing systematically through a rehabilitation process and maintenance of the drawings and the material support (paper, tracing paper, ozalid). By the electronic depositing will be gained a lot, thus, the data having a copy in the memory of the computer, gaining the fight with the degrading due mainly to the time. Meridio program has been tested, a part of the employees has attended specializing courses and work has been started at the scanning, rehabilitation of the drawings and their memorization. This process will last a year or two, according to Mr. Ionescu's opinion, taking into consideration the fact that it will be developed in a certain order, according to the documentation which is accessed more frequently, to the repairs of the rolling stock programmed for the next period of time and the new documents received lately.

Unfortunately, the cabling activity of CFR Palace hinders the unfolding of all the stages in the scheduled time in order to put this program in operation. It is hoped that till September 30, the deadline settled in the contract, the application of the Technical Documentation Management to become operational.

Also, when the personnel will get familiar with the applications, the activity will be developed in a shorter time, and afterwards, by program improvements, - which, taking into consideration the rhythm in which the computerized technique develops, will be inevitable technical documentation management will gain new valences.

Ileana Statie