The software was developed and created by Metinvest Digital in cooperation with Kamet-Steel's railway transport department. It is designed to consolidate online the most accurate relevant information about freight flows in general and each railcar in particular. From the moment it leaves the consignor, such a railcar becomes an object that can be tracked in the software by every user. Using the number of a railcar or a shipping document, it is now possible to track it en route and find out what freight is carried by the railcar, check its location, view the technical characteristics of the railcar, ownership, departure time, and operations carried out in respect of the railcar.

Among other things, it is possible to continuously monitor the turnover of railcars of the overall railway network, which deliver raw materials, equipment and consumables to the plant and are used for loading commercial steel products and transporting them to consumers. This means making prompt decisions on their movement, performing all the necessary operations and, ultimately, effectively influencing the turnover rate of railcars and reducing their downtime.

To date, the Centralised IDS brings together Ukrzaliznytsia, shipper counterparties and Kamet-Steel as users, including, first and foremost, the freight and commercial operations division of the railway transport department, the plant's railway stations, Ukrzaliznytsia's operations, commercial departments and subdivisions of the plant and, of course, most of the subdivisions that receive freight for production needs and ship products to customers.

"The centralised information dispatch system creates, first and foremost, the potential for the development of railway software. Kamet-Steel was the first Metinvest company to fully implement the system based on modern software platforms that meets the latest requirements for improving railway transportation processes. In the future, based on our experience, this software will be implemented at other enterprises of the company," says Valerii YANOVYCH, head of the freight and commercial operations division of the railway transport department at Kamet-Steel.

The programme is currently undergoing practical improvement and debugging. Users, who are primarily members of staff of railway stations, are adapting to this software. Users point to convenience of such work and optimisation of the railcar turnover control processes at this point already. We hope that Centralised IDS will eventually reduce the average downtime of railcars, which is expected to result in a decrease in the monthly fee for the use of cars of the overall network fleet by almost 5%.