Interview Insights:
Rail Analysis: how was your experience at the “Rail What are the focus areas for Envision? How would you Analysis Summit – The 4th Rail & Metro Technology bring value to your engagements? Conclave India 2023” ?
Shri R. Ramana: We were glad to be part of the Summit. India is going through a tremendous amount of transformation, In terms of Transportation. The government of India’s focus is to accelerate the speed of the logistics supply chain and encourage sustainable urban mobility and thrust on digitization for reliability and transparency in operations.
Envision is very happy to embark on this journey as a technology solution provider for Metro Rail. During the session, we had an opportunity to interact with Industry leaders, Government Executives, and supplier ecosystems on the latest developments.
We strongly believed the summit helped us to assess the future trends of the industry for us to align in enhancing the present offerings and thereby to expand the portfolio.
Rail Analysis: How do you see the future of the Rail/Metro Industry? what would be Envision’s role?
Shri R. Ramana: The government of India encouraging huge investments in Rail network modernization for Freight Movement with dedicated freight corridors and rapidly changing inter-city travel with Vande Bharath Initiatives. Similarly, the Metro Rail network started with DMRC now expanding to several Tire 2 and Tire 3 cities across India.
We see there is tremendous potential, The growth in the next 10 years will be multi-fold if you compare it with the past 50 years.
At Envision, since its inception in 2006, we always believed in long-term focus. We invested in several indigenously developed automation solutions apart from solutions from IBM. We continue to play a critical role in enabling the industry with best-of-the-breed solutions.
Rail Analysis: What are the focus areas for Envision? How would you bring value to your engagements?
Shri R. Ramana: Envision has proven on multiple occasions our capabilities in delivering Asset Management and IoT – based solutions gained the attention of major operators and OEMs to evaluate our offerings. In this process, we have acquired unique skills and been identified as a strong contender in the offerings of Metro Rail Asset and Associated Solutions.
We are also focusing on improving the operations with planning, scheduling, and optimization of Crews, Technicians, and other people across the network for optimized operations and reduced cost. We are also investing in a few more solutions which will be available for customers by the end of this year.
Rail Analysis: We understand that Envision built a center of excellence for the Rail and Metro Rail industry, can you tell us more about it?
Shri R. Ramana: Envision was in forefront since its inception working with a passion to identify niche areas that can prove our capabilities and bring out the best of the organization. We have a dedicated team working on Rai and Metro-related solutions at our center of excellence. With a lot of domain experts and external advisors we always focus on improving the solution functionally and technically. We are one of the very entities working committedly for this industry with massive investments for long term value creation.
Rail Analysis: What are the future technologies that can impend the metro rail industry in increasing the performance?
Shri R. Ramana: With the advent of advanced technologies and IoT deployment, Envision sees a rapid progress in new technologies with no limits and boundaries. Systems that are proprietary are going to lose the edge, new standards will emerge with seamless integration and AI / ML being extensively used for asset life cycle management, enhanced operational efficiency for huge savings and better control.
Rail Analysis: Where does Envision see a significant growth in future?
Shri R. Ramana: Envision with its presence in Metro rail Asset management, vision to be a key player in being identified as a One stop solution provider. We see a huge potential in the space of Analytics, Inspection and Work force management that holds the key for proper planning and customer success.
We also see that the asset life cycle will play a key role as these assets age over a period. The asset performance plays key role, which tend to deteriorate over a period. This is when the technology plays key role. IOT, AI/ML based predictive insights will play a key role.
Rail Analysis: With 14 successful Metro Rail implementation and digitalizations, what is Envision next action plan?
Shri R. Ramana: Envision expresses its gratitude to the industry for providing an opportunity, for us to engage at very early stage. This helped us immensely to build the critical mass. We also learned a lot from each engagement and improved in subsequent engagements. We continue to work closely with our existing customers and prospects. to deliver a system that was niche to India. Rapid Urbanization that requires a faster commute was identified as one of the core segment to focus. We also have specialised offerings in Ports and Logistics that play a vital role in economy of the state.
We have invested significant amount in developing auxiliary solutions to Asset management that helps the Owners and associates to embrace the technology for staying ahead.
Rail Analysis: Why Envision choose Metro Rail Industry for Automation? What are the major factors that made you to opt this industry for Asset Performance?
Shri R. Ramana: Envision strongly believed in principles of success of delivering Asset Management solutions that are best in industry, capital and asset intensive industries like Metro Transportation, E & U are key domains that requires early adoption of systems for consolidation thereby creating data models for O & M which directly helps in increase Asset reliability and extended life cycle.
Rail Analysis: Do you think that Metro Operations need to invest more on automation & Digitalization on their Assets?
Shri R. Ramana: As we are aware Metro Rail is as an Asset Intensive industry with a social commitment for safe and faster commute, regular timebound maintenance activities to be carried out for asset upkeep. To complement a reliable world class software system needs to be adopted for safety compliance and asset reliability. To be more competitive and increase revenue earnings passenger per km is possible only with support of right solutions.
Rail Analysis: Can you share one of your recent success story of a very critical problem of the industry solved ?
Shri R. Ramana: The most critical assets like, rolling stock is required the best maintenance. These assets need to maintain in a very short time window of less than few hours in midnight, keep them ready for operation by early morning. Rolling stock supplier requires to maintain the reliability and performance history of the assets for audit during the DLP period. Today there is no solution available to address these needs.
Envision in recent engagement with Maha Metro in Gujarat and MMOCL, we solved this problem with our IOT platform which captures all the Rolling stock logs from TCMS. We make the data available for IBM Maximo solution for condition-based maintenance and historical analysis for reliability and performance.
Rail Analysis: We also would like to know more about Envision doing other industries?
Shri R. Ramana: Apart from Solutions of Metro Rail and Rail industry Envision provides Asset Life Cycle Management solutions for Sea Ports, terminals, Power generation, Logistics and Supply Chain, Utilities, oil & Gas, Manufacturing industry. We have our products and solutions for Sea Ports, terminals, and Logistics industry. We have 6 offices globally and customer engagements in 46 countries. We thank Rail analysis for this opportunity to interact with the industry at this forum.
For more insights, please visit: www.envisionesl.com
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