ARCHITECTURE FOR OPERATION MANAGEMENT

IN URBAN RAIL TRAFFIC

Minmin Xiao and Shifeng Liu

School of Economic and management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

Keywords: Urban rail transit, Production and operations management system, Informationization.

Abstract: It is conspicuously to announce that China has already become the country with the largest-scale market as

well as the fastest growing urban rail transit in the world. This article, from the perspective of production

and operations, has described the status quo of the informationization of rail transit enterprises and analyzed

the demand for functions of production and operations management of these enterprises, aiming at the

improvement of current delicacy management. Meanwhile, we have put forward the general framework of

the system of operations management and discussed the system’s key functions to clarify its significance to

rail transit enterprises and recommend certain effective methods to enhance the informationization of the

production and operations management of rail transit enterprises.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the rapid development of cities around China,

rail transit has already become a fundamental project

of infrastructure to optimize the public

transportation and make the cities’ development

sustainable (LiBo, 2008). China is presently

enjoying a boom in constructing the rail transit and

has become the biggest market for the construction

of rail transit

(Liu R. F., Guan C. Q., 2005). As an

expression of advanced transportation technology

and a desirable way of transportation, rail transit

surely depends on informationization, which is a

necessary means to the prevention of safety

accidents in rail transit and delicacy management

(LiBo, 2008). Although China’s rail transit has

entered the period of informationization, there are

still plenty of problems in its information system.

From the perspective of production and

operations (Bai, Ma, 2010), there are problems like

low rate of integration (Martinez MJ, 2009) of such

subsystems as rails, vehicles, power supply, signal

and so on, lack of composite application, inadequate

arrangements for information resources, poor

sharing rate and insufficient extension of the

coverage of informationization (ZhouXiaoqi,

ZhengJian, 2005). What’s more, with the increase of

volumes of passengers (Aftabuzzaman M

(Aftabuzzaman, Md), Currie G (Currie, Graham),

Sarvi M (Sarvi, Majid), 2010), the current situation

of operations become increasingly poor, which has

been severely affecting the rail transit’s traffic

functions.

In order to address the issues mentioned above,

this article analyzes and discuss the general

framework (Koutsopoulos, Harls N., Wang, Zhigao,

2009) and key functions of the information system

of production and operations management of rail

transit (Holmstrom J, Framling K, Ala-Risku T,

2010). The system begins with the rail transit’s

technological features and aims at the improvement

of delicacy management. It also intends to combine

the various technology systems and business

management system together organically, and

achieve prediction and analysis to the volume,

organizations of traffic, directions of manoeuvre,

management of passenger transportation and the

informationization of alert and exigent directions to

enhance the rail transit enterprises’ construction of

informationization under the three main subjects of

rail transit’s production and operation-safety,

service, efficiency (Song Y, Wang ZC, Wang MS,

Huang S. G, 2010).

2 TRANSACTION

REQUIREMENT ANALYSES

As we all know, safety, effective operations and

serving societies are the primary goals of rail transit.

From the perspective of production of transportation,

rail transit is a huge and complex technology system

481

Xiao M. and Liu S..

ARCHITECTURE FOR OPERATION MANAGEMENT IN URBAN RAIL TRAFFIC.

DOI: 10.5220/0003584104810485

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (SSE-2011), pages 481-485

ISBN: 978-989-8425-53-9

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

made of such subsystems like rails, locomotives,

power supply, telecommunications and signals. And

it is also a system of unity of people and machines

(Shinya Kikuchi1, Nopadon Kronprasert, 2011)

The management core of rail transit enterprises is to

get the sectors in the production of transportation

linked organically, so that the whole system’s safety

and efficiency can be assured. Therefore, the daily

operation put emphasis on organizations of

transportation, service to passenger transportation

and safety management. A management information

system (MIS), with advanced technology, legitimate

structure, and synchronized functions, provides

powerful technological support to reach effective

operations, excellent services, safe motions and

scientific management. To achieve these goals, the

practice demand for functions of this system is as

follows:

z Management of transportation. Transportation

organization includes equipment for operations,

staff, operation plans and the work of direction.

Good transportation management is

instrumental to optimize the system’s

efficiency, magnify the capacity of traffic, meet

passengers’ and owners of cargo’s diverse

needs, and provide more convenient, faster and

more comfortable services. Thus, it is of great

importance.

z Management of passenger services. It includes

services to passengers, ticketing, tickets funds,

platform services and complaints settlement.

The agents should conform to the principle of

“focus on people”, and advocate high-

efficiency and high-quality services. At the

same time, due to the differences of the cost of

investment to subway routes in different cities,

the income from ticketing should be distributed

to respective companies, so that managers can

master the operation situation of every unit.

z Safety management. The system has to

guarantee the safety of the operating vehicles

(Ding Lieyun, Jia L, Fu Feifei, Luo Hanbin,

Wu Xianguo, 2009). During the process of

informationization, the selected equipment and

adopted technology must ensure the safely

running. Meanwhile, the adoption of mature

technology can make the system run smoothly

and avoid the risks brought by preliminary trial

operations. Making good use of sophisticated

technologies that already existed from domestic

and overseas will shorten the construction

period substantially, and reinforce the system’s

stability so that we can see the benefits from

informationization sooner.

z Integrated management (Stella F, Vigano V,

Bogni D, Benzoni M, 2006) with advanced

information technologies. The information

system should set out from the whole entity,

design systematically and implement

universally, so that the construction of the

system can be carried out organically and

orderly. Each subsystem should not be systems

isolated from the outside, and should be closely

connected with other systems in order to

achieve the information sharing within the

system and among other practice systems, as

well as the related units of government and

local communities.

3 THE ARCHITECTURE OF

OPERATION MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION SYSTEM

In order to fulfill the enterprises’ demand for

operation management, the application structures of

MIS are illustrated as figure 1.

As is shown in figure 1, the system has two

hierarchies. The bottom layer serves to monitor

comprehensively, belonging to the technology

system; the upper layer is a platform for production,

belonging to management system. The respective

functions and contents of each hierarchy are as

follows.

3.1 Comprehensive Monitoring --

Technology System

This hierarchy is closely connected to hardware. It

controls the hardware and collects and analyze the

signals of the equipment’s status though

telecommunication system. This layer mainly

embraces SCADA, AFC, FAS, BAS, PIS and other

systems, which can monitor the power supply,

locomotives, the risk of fire, environmental

disasters, the mechanical and electrical equipment at

the station, the automatic tickets-checking devices,

and the equipment for guiding the passengers. The

subsystems mentioned above finally unify together

through the comprehensive monitoring system, and

offer a way for the staff to master the situation of

operations. Theoretically, the comprehensive

monitoring system is able to combine all the

technology subsystems together, and make

suggestions for the comprehensive manoeuvre

decisions by gathering signals, analyzing universally,

and translating the information for the administrative.

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482

Figure 1: The architecture of operation management system.

However, we must note that the current

comprehensive surveillance systems in the field of

rail transportation both domestically and abroad, are

still developed from the perspective of technology.

Consequently, the functions of practice management

of these systems are relatively weak, and they cannot

entirely cover the requirements of production and

operations of rail transit. Therefore, it is necessary to

expand the functions of the comprehensive

monitoring system and integrate with the system of

practice management of production by data

connection with the guidance of the universal

arrangements of production and operations system.

3.2 Transaction Layer-management

System

Transaction layer is the counterpart of technology

system, belonging to the realm of management

system. However, it is organically linked with the

technology system, and needs the help of

comprehensive monitoring system to gather data

from respective technology systems, and to analyze

and transform the information to understandable

information for the administration.

According to the general rules of operations

management of rail transit, this layer primarily

implements the task of informationization of

prediction and analysis to the volume, organizations

of traffic, management of passenger transportation

and the informationization of alert and exigent

directions. The systems mentioned above need to

exchange data with the technology systems. For

example, the volume prediction system need to be

connected with AFC to collect the information of

passenger volume; the system of organizations of

traffic needs to convey the locomotives’ operation

plans to the commanding center; the system of

scheduling command needs to receive various data

from comprehensive monitoring system and

translate them into the proper forms to the officials;

the system of alert and exigent directions needs to

further analyze the data from the comprehensive

monitoring system from the perspective of safety

and emergencies, and to start the counter plans to

tackle the certain situation.

4 KEY FUNCTIONS AND THE

FULFILLMENT OF MIS

For this part, we are going to discuss the most

important functions for production and operation

management in rail transit industy.

ARCHITECTURE FOR OPERATION MANAGEMENT IN URBAN RAIL TRAFFIC

483

4.1 Subsystem for Predicting and

Analyzing of Passengers

This subsystem conducts the predictions of volume

of passengers and many kinds of statistical analyses

at both macro and micro levels to provide

justifications to routes operation plan, organization

management and program management, which is the

origin of the management information system of

production and operations. It mainly includes such

key functions like collecting fundamental data,

predicting and analyzing the passenger volume at

macro level, predicting and analyzing the passenger

volume at micro level, statistically analyzing reports

and so on. The fundamental data are classified into

four categories. The first kind of data is those

statistics from the authority, including population,

economy, traffic and city planning. The second kind

is the collected data about the passenger volume,

including the information about passengers’ needs

for going out, the information on passengers’ ways

of transportation, passengers’ starting and finishing

points, their ages, incomes, and psychology. The

third category of data is the real figures of AFC.

According to the current technological means of

AFC, there are starting and finishing points and

tickets funds. The last kind of data is synthesis of

survey on volume and samples of AFC data. The

macro prediction and analysis are mainly based on

the first, second and fourth categories of data,

specifically including such functions like

management of repertoire of predicting models,

generating plans for out-going, distribution of

traffic, division of means and allocation of traffic

volume. The micro prediction and analysis are

mainly based on the last two kinds of data, including

functions like the management of past volume

statistics, the regular patterns of the distribution of

passengers volume (trend, fluctuations among

seasons, and recurring fluctuations). The report

involving analyzing the macro and micro prediction

results jointly, showing the results of analyses in the

forms of graphs using GIS. The results include

analyses of density, distribution, fluctuating patterns

of passengers.

4.2 Subsystem for Traffic

Organizations

This system is actually one of the subsystems of plan

management for operations, which primarily works

on the codification of the business’ yearly plan, the

train operation diagram and other kinds of plans.

The yearly plan is a kind of macro and directive

program. This plan can be further into quarterly,

monthly and ten-day basis plans, and it has a

function of adjustment of plans. The main tasks of

the codification system are to codify the regular train

operation graphs and the ones on weekends and

holidays, in order to adjust to the fluctuations of

volume. Besides, this system some subsidiary

functions like intersections management, indicators

management and simulation of operations.

Comprehensive planning mainly includes

compartment attendant planning, plan for vehicles

use. These auxiliary plans are supplements to the

train operation diagram and intend to ensure the

appropriate implementation of the train operation

diagram.

4.3 Running Dispatching Subsystem

This subsystem is used to undertake the specific

works of daily operations. It is a collective and

managenment on the basis of comprehensive

monitoring, which is directed by organizations of

traffic plan and mainly embraces traffic scheduling,

power dispatch, loop control scheduling and

comprehensive fixing scheduling.

From the management level, this subsystem

includes data exchange, scheduling log management,

daily statistical management and the comprehensive

fixing plans. Data exchange involves gathering

information from kinds of technology systems and

translating them to the understandable jargons with

the help of the comprehensive monitoring system.

Scheduling log management is a comprehensive

record of the certain shift, primarily recoding the

shifting of duty, the operation situation of each

technology system and indicators and the abnormal

condition handling. A further classification can be

power, traffic and loop control in light of specialty,

and comprehensive scheduling and scheduling on

station basis according to certain posts. Daily

statistical management produces various immediate

statistical reports according to the requirements and

provides materials to the leaders of the enterprise

and each operating department to ensure their

knowledge of the situation of production and

operations. “Accurate statistics” can be finished at

the ends of months. Comprehensive fixing plan

serves to conduct plan scheduling, which principally

involves formulating the daytime shift work plans

including personnel on duty and plan scheduling and

other scheduling functions. The main function of it

is the fulfillment of the formulation and issuing of

the day time shift plan and the arrangements of

comprehensive fixing plans.

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4.4 Passenger Transportation

Management Subsystem

The subsystem has many functions such as fare,

metro card, complaints and some other passenger

service administrations (Ulusoy, 2010). Fare

statistical work is to help the corporation has an

understanding of incomes. According to customer

relationship management theory, the subway

company should feed back information in time, and

can improve the service quality of company finally.

4.5 Warning and Emergency

Command Subsystem

According to precautionary theory, this subsystem

mainly involves emergency command, safety

precaution and education management. Also, it

concludes circumstance, equipment, administration,

and other factors. To be specific, safety precaution

management has the features of safety architecture

management and monitor information collection;

emergency management mainly includes security

pre-proposal on railway accidents.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This article analyzes the requirements of operation

management, from the angel of urban rail transit

business. Through the analysis, we propose a

framework for operation management information

system. Further more, we analyze the key functions

of the system in detail. However, the rail transit has

the characteristics of complexity, more intermediate

links and strong ties. Therefore, the fine-grained

management should, based on advanced

management system, make full use of information

technology. In the end, the purpose of this article is

to offer a model for operation management in rail

transit industry, and expect the industry to achieve

the goal of modernization and informationization

finally.

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