Railways plans roadmap for three-fold increase in production

Eyeing large scale expansion, the Railways' production units have been asked to formulate a roadmap to achieve a three-fold increase in production by 2022.

This comes after Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal held a meeting with the general managers of all the railway zones last month during which he emphasised the need for improving the transport output by three times by 2022.

"It is needless to say that output of our production units has to increase substantially during this period to match the growth expectations," a letter to the general managers of all production units of the railways said.

"There is therefore, an urgent need for evaluating the performance of manufacturing facilities to assess their capability to ramp up production by almost three-times the present level with the existing workforce," it said.

One of the most significant increase is to take place in the production of Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches this year.

But boosting production significantly requires a sharp increase in the present annual coach production target of 2,435 to 5,000 such coaches, officials said.

The directive to the production units also says that the plan should be such that it facilitates decisions that lead to the best usage of time, financial and human resources.

The plan, it said, should be "workable" and should succeed by making suitable changes to the present processes, inducting technology and introducing a judicious mix of "make or buy matrix".

It is therefore imperative that the production units of the Indian Railways embark on the journey of a three-fold increase with a clear strategy, the directive said.

"You are requested to formulate a 'production ramp-up' road map with absolute clarity of resources required with cost and time line and communicate to board latest by January 31, 2018," the letter said.