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A Tracking Management Information System for Railway Construction

Materials

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Ling LU1, Futian WANG2, and Rengkui LIU3

1

State Key Laboratory of Rail

University, Beijing, China
luling0512@163.com
State Key Laboratory of Rail
University, Beijing, China
wangfutian@jtys.bjtu.edu.cn
State Key Laboratory of Rail
University, Beijing, China
liurengkui@jtys.bjtu.edu.cn

Traffic Control and Safety, Beijing Jiaotong

100044; PH (86) 10-51687137; email:
Traffic Control and Safety, Beijing Jiaotong
100044; PH (86) 10-51687137; email:
Traffic Control and Safety, Beijing Jiaotong
100044; PH (86) 10-51687137; email:

ABSTRACT
Materials and equipment is the physical basis for railway construction. Their
quality and suitability have a direct influence on the quality of the project and strong
impact on the safety of the future railway operation. This paper studies the method of
building a prompt and accurate Materials Tracking Management Information System
(MTMIS). Based on the platform of railway construction essential data, the MTMIS
integrates basic data during the process of materials supplying, testing, allocating and
quality inspection; analyzing data properties; and developing data coding and
establishing the data correlations. Materials production batches, delivery batches, and
inspection batches are collected and monitored in MTMIS, which provides possibility
for tracing and positioning individual materials and equipment in the same batch.
MTMIS also provide decision support for railway construction quality control and
supplier credit rating and provide database export to future management information
system applied during railway operation and maintenance.
INTRODUCTION
The acceptable quality and appropriate specification of materials and
equipment is the solid guarantee for railway construction project. When a material is
found to have quality problems, the same problem maybe occur in the same batch of
materials. It is of great benefit for efficient railway construction management to
strengthen the material tracking management for materials supply, testing, and
deployment.
On quality traceability of materials, foreign scholars have introduced various
techniques and methods, such as RFID proximity localization (Song et al., 2006),

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ZigBee-based tracking system architecturere (Jang et al., 2008), and Construction

Common Product Code System (Pan., 2009). Materials management is considered
one of the greatest positive development inthe engineering construction processes
(Vorster et al., 2002). However, the above methods cannot be integrated within the
business processes of Chinese railway construction or directly applied in the materials
tracing management. Railway construction in China remains large scale over a long
period of time. As materials and equipment are from multi-vendors and deployed in
many different projects, it would be very difficult to monitor the quality control of
these construction materials. The Ministry of Railways repeatedly has stressed the
need to establish a quality traceability system for the whole process and the whole
life-cycle of the assets used in contruction. Some Chinese software companies have
developed several products, such as Jingdian Materials Management System and
Huiruan Technique Materials Management System. However, these products only
focus on the independent aspects of materials procurement, warehouse management,
or cost management, instead of on the entire process of material management in
railway construction.
In this paper, we studied the method of building Materials Tracking
Management Information System (MTMIS) based on railway construction materials
essential data,. By means of establishing materials supplier files and recording key
information from materials testing, receiving and allocatiion, it can be clear to see
who has provided the materials and where those materials have been used. If a
material quality problem is found on one project site, MTMIS can also be used to
trace and locate all the other sites where the same batch of materials have been used.
So it becomes possible to trace the supplier and the deployment locations whenever
equipment and materials are found defective.
MTMIS MODEL DESIGN
Data Requirements
During each stage of the whole-life processthe period of public bidding, site
acceptance test (SAT), site installation, operation, and maintenance--large amounts of
data are generated. In order to track and monitor all the critical events involving
quality defects, the following are the major data that should be covered:
1. Supplier information (Such as supplier ID, the suppliers full name,
enterprise qualification, and production lisence).
2. Materials receiving record (Such as material ID, material name, supplier
ID, deliver date, and material certificate).
3. Test commission record (Such as commission ID, the suppliers full name,
and material ID).

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4. Test report (Such as test report ID, material name, commission ID, test
date, and test results).
5. Allocation record (Such as material ID, material name, allocation date,
allocation quantity, and construction sites).
6. Project quality inspection record (Such as project quality inspection record
ID, project name, project category, inspection site, test report ID,
inspection date, and inspection result).
Data Correlations
A unique ID is given to each batch of materials, supplier, test commission
record, test report, allocation record ,and project quality inspection record, then data
correlations can be seen as shown in Figure 1. Supplier ID and material ID in
materials receiving record can be associated with supplier information and allocation
records. Material ID and test commission records can link materials receiving record,
test commission records, and test report together. Test report ID is required to fill in
the project quality inspection record in order to prove that the materials used are
qualified products. So the test report and project quality inspection record can be
connected. By means of the above correlations, we can analyze the source and the
destination of each batch of materials and realize the traceability of materials and
equipment.

Figure 1. Correlations of materials tracking data

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The Materials Tracking Model

The traceable management of materials and equipment in MTMIS includes
forward tracking and reverse tracking. Using forward tracking, it is clear to see when
and who provided the batch of materials, whether the quality is acceptable, and where
the batch of materials will be used during the procedures of materials supplying,
receiving, testing, and allocating. A forward tracking flowchart is shown in Figure 2.
By contrast, reverse tracking means that when a project site is ascertained, it can
tracked back to what materials were used in this part of project, when and whom
provided these materials, and whats more, it can position all the other construction
sites where the same batch of materials are used. A reverse tracking flowchart is
shown in Figure 3.

Figure 2. Forward tracking flowchart

Figure 3. Reverse tracking flowchart

APPLICATIONS OF MTMIS
Auxiliary of Railway Operation and Maintenance
With the railways long-term uninterrupted operation, the materials and
accessories comprising the railway will inevitably age. The projects constructed by
the same batch of materials and accessories may have similar quality problems. For
example, if a flaw is detected in some steel rails of a certain mileage, the same batch
of rails provided by the same supplier may probably have the same problem. In
order to prevent accidents, we need to know in what mileage segments the flawed

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rails are deployed in and take appropriate preventive measures. before a wider range
of quality issues occur.
The reverse tracking model of MTMIS can trace back all the other
construction sites from one kind of materials construction site. If a construction site
is found to have quality problems, we can trace the test report ID from the project
quality inspection record of this site. Then the material ID can be retrieved and the
allocating report can be found. According to the allocating report, all the
construction sites and the allocating quantity of the same batch of materials can be
ascertained.
Quality Evaluation of Materials Supply
MTMIS can realize the traceable management of railway construction
materials, make clear by each batch of materials being tested which supplies provided
which material and which constructions sites the materials was being used. Thereby,
according to the materials test results, the MTMIS can evaluate the materials supply
quality of suppliers within a certain range (a construction section, a railway line, a
Railway Bureau or Ministry of Railways). Credit evaluation methods of railway
construction materials and equipment suppliers (Ministry of Railways, 2009)
described the probable misconduct and divided the severity of misconduct into three
levels. The misconduct means a) violations of relevant contract, b) violation of
regulations and law caused by the railway construction materials suppliers on the
aspects of bidding, contract signing and fulfilling, and c) the aftersale service and
materials quality. The classification of the misconduct is shown in Table 1.
Reference to Table 1, we can build a materials supply quality evaluation
equation for a supplier as below:

S 100

i 1

i 1

n i1 n i 2 n i 3
i 1

m
i 1

where S denotes materials supply quality score, k is the project quantity of a

construction (such as a railway line, a Railway Bureau, or Ministry of Railways), ni1
is the number of ordinary misconducts within a project, ni2 is the number of
comparative misconducts within a project, ni3 is the number of grave minconducts
within a project, mi is materials testing quantity of Project i, , , means the
weight of ordinary, comparative and grave misconducts, respectively. , and can

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be determined by railway construction headquarters according to the economic losses

of each type of misconduct.
Table 1. Classification of Suppliers Misconduct
Category
No. Standard of Judgement
1
Failure to provide required performance bond.
Failure to provide a timely product certificate or inspection
2
certificate in delivery inspection.
Ordinary
Failure to deliver materials within a resonable timeframe
Misconduct
3
according to the requirement plan because of the suppliers'
own reasons.
The existence of substandard materials quality records in
4
the sampling inspection.
5
Unjustified refusal to sign or perform contract.
Failure to deliver materials after three times pressing notice
6
which influences the projects duration or the cessation of
the project.
Comparative
Misconduct
Breach of contract and causing the losses for the tender
7
over 300,000 RMB (about $43,000).
Causing construction project defects due to materials
8
quality problems.
9
Using any fraudulent means to have its bid accepted.
Grave
Grave security or quality accidents caused by material
Misconduct
10
quality problems.
According to the result of materials test report, MTMIS can judge whether the
materials is qualified, trace the supplier information, and provide decision support for
evaluating suppliers materials supply quality.
CONCLUSION
Through collecting relevant data of railway construction materials and
equipment, the authors analyzed the data in the key stages from the materials
deployment, testing and examining; allocating and project inspecting; studying the
correlations of the data and establishing the forward and reverse materials tracing
model to achieve the traceability of materials and equipment management. Together,
these stages can provide supplementary support along with suppliers evaluations
and railway operations and maintenance.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This Research was fully sponsored by the National Key Technology R&D
Program (No. 2009BAG12A10) and the State Key Laboratory of Rail Traffic
Control and Safety of Beijing Jiaotong University of China (Contract No.
SKL2008K006).
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