Dutch firm helping Kerala manage transport
Friday, 07 March 2003, 20:30 IST
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CHENNAI: Using India-made software, a Dutch company is now helping Kerala revamp its transport system. ARS Transport Technology in the Netherlands is an IT company that creates software to track transport systems. It has brought to India a traffic monitoring system that can revolutionise goods and passenger movement on the length and breadth of India's roads. Two years ago the company moved to an IT development park in Thiruvananthapuram so that it could cut costs and tap Indian software manpower for the company. "We thought it would provide us good back-office skills with low attrition rate," says Martjjn van der Spek, officer in charge of ARS Transport. It is here that Indian software experts developed for the company a tracking and tracing system for the Netherlands Railways. "It may surprise you, but so long, we in Holland did not have a system in place to track the exact position of our trains," Spek says. The ARS India office then developed a system for bus route tracking and fleet management software. So popular and cost saving was the system that ARS Netherlands began selling the product to its other European neighbour countries. It has helped Scotland and the county of Yorkshire in traffic jam management. ARS Netherlands manufactures the hardware, an electronic device that is planted in buses, cars and even lories. The ARS software developed in India helps monitors keep tab on every vehicle on the road. A small transmitter is also provided so that the driver can communicate with the central monitoring agency. "We can tell the driver, exactly where he is and why he is stuck. We can also alert him about possible diversions he can opt for," the ARS official points out. He has been showcasing the system to industry leaders in Chennai gathered at the opening of a new Netherlands business office for south India. Having tasted success in Netherlands, ARS was looking for bigger markets when the Kerala State Transport Corporation showed interest in trying out the system, for buses running on its road. Kerala, on the west coast of India is a long, forested and partly hilly state with a large volume of north-south road traffic. Kerala has now equipped its buses with the ARS tracking device, imported from Holland. The central transport office in Thiruvananthapuram is now able to monitor all its long distance buses, up to a minute. "We feel gratified that our system is working marvellously not only in Europe but even in India," says Spek. "ARS is looking for a manufacturer in India who can make the hardware available at affordable cost for a vast Indian market", says Spek.
Source: IANS
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