Indian railways pilots RFID for improving wagon efficiency

Filed in archive Implementation on September 10, 2007

It is one of the world's largest and busiest railway networks in the world carrying more than sixteen million passengers and one million tones of freight everyday and if you are a person who keeps tab on what all is happening around the world then you may have guessed it right that I am talking about the indian railways. Now this largest railway network is looking to undertake a RFID pilot for automatic identification of railway wagons across the whole of India.




Since the freight sector is one of the biggest contributors to the revenue of Indian railways it is looking forward to improve the utilization of these wagons and has been on a look out for an online system for tracking wagons on its 62000 km worth of rail network. The pilot is being conducted on the Talcher - Paradeep - Vishakhapatnam section of the East Coast Railway where about five hundred wagons will be affixed with RFID tags. This is expected to identify the possible problem areas and come out with strategies to eliminate them.

I believe RFID companies have a good business in hand since they could end up with big contracts since Indian railways doles out of contracts worth millions each year to companies with regards to its development and other maintenance activities and if the pilot turns out to be successful then RFID companies worldwide have a good opportunity to expand their business in India.