Pakistan Railways and Google have joined hands to revolutionize scrapyard management by deploying a state-of-art Scrapyard Management System powered by Google technologies and implemented by Tech Valley Pakistan.
The management system is currently being deployed in Islamabad Carriage Factory (ICF) as a Proof of Concept (POC) which will be later on expanded to the national level.
Federal Minister for Railways Senator Muhammad Azam Khan Swati inaugurated the Scrapyard Management System along with Google Productivity and Collaboration Suite. Senior officials from the Ministry of Railways and CEO Tech Valley Umar Farooq along with his team were present at the occasion. Representatives from Google also joined the event online through Google Meet.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, the minister said, “Pakistan Railways has an annual scrap disposal target of Rs. 2 billion which is added to the national exchequer. For quite some time copper scrap has not been disposed of, recently the same scrap was given on Government-to-Government (G2G) basis to M/S POF and Railways received Rs. 1 billion in the last two months.”
The cloud-based scrapyard management system will digitise the Scrapyard assets of Pakistan Railways, streamlining the scrapyard inventory management & bringing transparency to the Scrap Management process of Pakistan Railways.
Along with Scrapyard Management System, the collaboration and productivity suite was also inaugurated by the minister. The suite will provide railway employees with an effective way to collaborate with different teams using the latest digital tools. This will also aid in ensuring productivity while working remotely or communicating from distant locations.
Speaking on the occasion, CEO Tech Valley Umar Farooq said, “Under the Prime Minister’s vision of Digital Pakistan, digitizing scrapyard management and deploying Google Workspace is one of the many upcoming steps in digitizing the Pakistan Railways and current government at large.”
Swati also appreciated the efforts of Google, the Tech Valley team and officers from Railways especially project lead Saad Ullah Zahid, who was involved in the development and implementation process of the Scrapyard Management System.
The minister further said, “An IT-based system is the only way such process can be streamlined and transparency can be brought to Government institutes”.
He also shared details about the other technological initiatives that are currently being deployed in Railways including RABTA, Complaint Management System, Facial recognition, E-Ticketing and E-Procurement.