RailDOCS's Configuration Management System (CMS) is comprised of three major components. Those components are the CMS Metadata Builder, the CMS Data Collector, and the CMS Standards Guardian. Each of these components plays a vitally important role in a successful CMS implementation, and they each complement each other.
The CMS Metadata Builder establishes strict "rules of the game" for each and every manufactured component. Those rules determine the data that needs to be collected by the CMS Data Collector for each component, and how those components relate to each other (how they plug into slots on chassis and/or into each other). Use of the CMS Metadata Builder is limited to a select group of users within 10East Corp., railroad customers, and the vendors that make equipment that is under the purview of the Configuration Management System. Additionally, users can be given access to only certain data trees in the CMS Metadata Builder, which is used, for example, to give a particular vendor visibility and control over only their product lines in the CMS Metadata Builder. 10East works with the vendor community, providing training material and user support, to promote the highest quality equipment metadata, which leads to the highest possible quality of data being collected from users of the CMS Data Collector component, which then leads to the CMS Standards Guardian being most effective.
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The CMS Data Collector uses the rules established by the CMS Metadata Builder to present users with configuration data collection forms that are perfectly customized for each type of equipment. The CMS Data Collector follows the established rules, and guides users through collecting and reporting high quality configuration data.
The CMS Data Collector has two user interfaces. One is delivered through RailDOCS proper, and can be used with any standard web-browser. The other is delivered through the RailDOCS Mobile Business Platform, and allows handheld and laptop users, who are normally disconnected from the Internet, to collect configuration data and later synchronize it with RailDOCS.
The CMS Standards Guardian has two components, or roles. Firstly, railroad engineering departments enter data into the CMS Standards Guardian to instruct it about the standards that the railroad wishes to enforce on its configurations. This data can come from many sources, but will most often stem from manufacturer service bulletins and company standards. Manufacturer service bulletins will typically apply to a certain class of configurations or equipment, and apply across the entire railroad. Company standards will also often apply company-wide, but they can also apply to a much smaller subset of the railroad, be that a subdivision, a set of milepost ranges, or even down to one single location, or a single chassis. A common example would be insuring that the appropriate application software is installed in the interlocking vital logic and track circuit controllers at a given location.
Secondly, the CMS Standards Guardian constantly monitors our customers' configurations, looking for equipment that violates any of the established standards, which we refer to as anomalies. Notifications of anomalies can go to many levels of the organization, and with different levels of priority, including emails, routine reports, or indications that appear in the CMS Data Collector and To-Do List interfaces on RailDOCS Mobile devices, complete with detailed information about the standard that has flagged the anomaly, how critical it is, how the railroad wishes it to be remediated, etc. Additionally, and at any time, customers can navigate to a standard in the CMS Standards Guardian and have it find and report any anomalies related to that standard.
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The CMS Standards Guardian allows customers to manage service bulletins from start to finish, and will continue to monitor for problems forevermore. The CMS Standards Guardian allows customers to enforce company standards on any configuration, and at any level of the railroad hierarchy, from system-wide down to an individual chassis in a single location.
The number of standards records in the CMS Standards Guardian can vary dramatically from customer to customer, and the differences are mostly attributable to each customer's choice between Point of Presence or Double Blind validation. On many railroads, a choice for double blind validation will require CMS Standards Guardian rules for almost every CMS-managed location, for the oversight of site-specific, application software.
