Indian Railways

Indian Railways uses GS1 identifiers, encoded in radio frequency tags, to manage and know which of its assets – wagons, coaches and locomotives – are located where. For unique identification of its rolling stock, the EPC/RFID tags are encoded with GS1’s GIAI-202 standard. Trackside readers installed in between stations and other key points can read these tags from a distance, for runtime detection of maintenance parameters.

Once fully implemented, this will provide visibility to each vehicle, i.e., wagon/coach/ locomotive that runs over the Indian Railways in near real time. With this, Railways plans to improve the quality of information for predicting maintenance work content, besides using it for freight traction and coach maintenance in the near future.