The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) and GS1 Australia have launched new implementation guidelines to improve efficiency, lower costs and deliver better customer service for the rail industry using GS1 standards.
Developed over 18 months, the Implementation Guideline for the Effective Management of Inventory in the Australian Rail Industry was officially launched at AusRAIL 2016 in Adelaide with ARA’s Chief Operating Officer, Phil Allan, GS1 Australia’s Chief Executive Officer, Maria Palazzolo, and Senior Manager – Trade, Transport and Heavy Industry at GS1 Australia, Bonnie Ryan.
“Australia’s Rail Industry is significantly challenged with managing efficient maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) processes to ensure and maintain the optimum quality of assets across the sector,” said Mr Allan.
“To address this industry challenge, the ARA and its members from the working group including rail operators, suppliers, manufacturers and contractors worked in partnership with GS1 Australia and developed the guideline that underpins best practice for inventory management and stock control using GS1 standards.”
Based on GS1 global standards, the objective of the new guideline is to set an industry standard for how to implement unique identification and automatic data capture using barcoding and/or RFID tagging in organisations and value chains across the rail industry.
Speaking at AusRAIL 2016, Chief Executive Officer at GS1 Australia, Ms Palazzolo, said, “This new capability will represent an important milestone in the history of the Australian Rail Industry.
“The guideline will assist members to implement the agreed standards by marking MRO materials and components in a consistent way to improve inventory and supply chain processes that will significantly reduce costs and lead to more effective management of assets.”
Ms Ryan said there is currently no standardised approach to the way materials and assets in the Australian rail environment are identified and marked.
“The industry is still hamstrung by manual and paper based practices that are costly and inefficient.
“Using a common, standards based approach for the identification and marking of materials, components, logistics units, locations and assets will simplify some fundamental processes in the Australian rail industry that will result in improved inventory management and more effective asset management overall.”
