The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) and GS1 Australia have officially launched the new Implementation Guideline for the Effective Management of Inventory in the Australian Rail Industry to improve efficiency, lower costs and deliver better customer service for the Rail Industry using GS1 standards.

Developed over the past 18 months by GS1 Australia in consultation with the Australasian Railway Association Inventory Management Improvement Initiative and associated industry working group, the guideline was officially launched at AusRAIL 2016 in Adelaide with Phil Allan, ARA’s Chief Operating Officer, GS1 Australia’s Chief Executive Officer, Maria Palazzolo, and Bonnie Ryan, Senior Manager – Trade, Transport & Heavy Industry at GS1 Australia.

“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 Implementation Guideline for the Effective Management of Inventory in the Australian Rail Industry 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, Maria Palazzolo, Chief Executive Officer at GS1 Australia 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.”

According to Ms Ryan 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.”

The new Implementation Guideline for the Effective Management of Inventory in the Australian Rail Industry is now available for download.

About GS1 Australia

GS1 is an international not-for-profit association with Member Organisations in 112 countries. GS1 is dedicated to the design and implementation of global supply chain standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across sectors. The GS1 system of standards is the most widely used supply chain standards system in the world. For more information visit http://www.gs1au.org/

About Australasian Railway Association

The Australasian Railway Association (ARA) are the peak body for the rail industry throughout Australia. We represent an array of rail organisations: private and public, passenger and freight operators, track owners and managers, manufacturers of rolling stock, construction companies and all other organisations supplying and contributing to the Australasian rail sector. We provide a coordinated and unified voice on relevant issues of national importance. The ARA engages political leaders at both the state and federal level in forward-looking discussions around industry potential. For more information visit http://www.ara.net.au/

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