Indian oil and gas company Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, a Fortune 500 company, has partnered with the Indian Railways to help it manage its loco-fueling operations through completely automated system, called Total Fuel Management.
The system manages the entire operations of the Railway Consumer Depots (RCD). RCD’s store and disburse High Speed Diesel Oil for fueling Diesel Locomotives in Indian Railways. The system manages the entire chain including product received in bulk tanks, storage, safe keeping and loco fuelling. It logs the product inventory of stocks till it is delivered to the locomotives providing both quality and quantity aspects.
When the diesel engine arrives at the platform, the operator uses a mobile handheld device to input like the locomotive number, pilot id, inward diesel quantity in the loco tank and selection of fuel flow meter. The handheld device sends the information to a cloud based system to the batch controller unit which triggers the digital control valve. The loco driver can monitor the fuel status in real time. Once the preset fuelling quantity is achieved the batch controller automatically shuts down the valve to stop fuelling. Once the filling is done a receipt is sent to back office and the operator.
In 2018, the minimum Inventories of all major RCD’s have been reduced from 15 to 5 days, which made fuel management necessary. Other known Oil marketing Companies who supply to the RCD include Reliance Industries, Essar Oil Limited, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) and the ONGC subsidiary Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL).