Category: University of Mumbai BMS Notes

There are 3 categories of Potential Sources of Stress mentioned as follows:

1. Environmental Stress
2. Organizational Stress
3. Individual Stress

Environmental Stress

Environmental uncertainty influences stress levels among employees in an organization. Changes in the business cycle crate economic uncertainties. Political uncertainties can be stress inducing. Technological uncertainty can cause stress because new innovations can make an employee’s skills and experience obsolete in a very short period of time. Heat, Cold, Noise, Traffic, Pollution are the examples of Environmental Stress.

Types of Environmental Stressors

• Major Disturbance Stressor
  • Natural disasters
  • Major life changes
  • Tragic events
• Climate Stressors
• Chemical Stressors
• Anthropogenic Stressors
  • Crowds
  • Excess and loud noise
  • Changes to the natural environment
• Energetic Stress
  • Ionizing radiation (Ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays)
  • Non-ionizing radiation (microwaves, radio waves, visible light)
• Physical Environment Stressors
  • Too much or not enough light
  • Colors
  • The location of items in your environment
• Ergonomic Stressors
  • Poor posture from work environments
  • Heavy labor or exercise
  • Intellectual stress
• Biological Stressors
  • Pathogens
  • Allergens
  • Illness

Organizational Stress

Stress can be caused by a wide variety of things. Positive stress may result in an increase in energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. Negative stress has more serious consequences. The common causes are organizational stressors and life stressors.

Organizational Stressors

Organizational stressors may relate to task demands, physical demands, role demands, or inter-personal demands.

1. Task demands are stressors associated with the specific task or job the person is performing. Some occupations are naturally more stressful than others.
2. Physical demands are stressors associated with the job setting. Environmental temperatures, poorly designed offices, and threats to health can lead to stress.
3. Role demands are stressors associated with a particular position in a group or organization. Examples are role ambiguity and the various role conflicts that people experience in groups.
4. Inter-personal demands are stressors associated with the characteristics of the relationships that confront people in organizations. Examples are group pressure, personality style, and leadership style.

Individual Stress

Stress can adversely affect an individual. Individual stress has direct consequences for organizations. The performance level declines and withdrawal behaviours such as absenteeism and turnover may occur if there is too much stress. People may exhibit poor attitudes when they are under too much stress. This affects their mental health and wellbeing as well as their physiological well-being.

Type A and Type B Personality Profiles

Type A individuals are extremely competitive and very devoted to work. They have a strong sense of timing and urgency. They are likely to be aggressive, impatient, and very work-oriented. It is because of these personality traits that a Type A person is more likely to experience stress than a Type B person.

The Type B individuals tend to be less competitive and less devoted to their work. They have a weaker sense of timing and urgency. The Type B person is less likely to experience stress than the Type A person. Few people are either purely Type A or purely Type B.

A stressor is a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event seen as causing stress to an organism. Psychologically speaking, a stressor can be events or environments that individuals might consider demanding, challenging, and/or threatening individual safety.

Events or objects that may trigger a stress response may include:

• Environmental stressors (hypo or hyper-thermic temperatures, elevated sound levels, over-illumination, overcrowding)
• Daily “stress” events (e.g., traffic, lost keys, money, quality and quantity of physical activity)
• Life changes (e.g., divorce, bereavement)
• Workplace stressors (e.g., high job demand vs. Low job control, repeated or sustained exertions, forceful exertions, extreme postures, office clutter)
• Chemical stressors (e.g., tobacco, alcohol, drugs)
• Social stressor (e.g., societal and family demands)

Stressors can cause physical, chemical and mental responses internally. Physical stressors produce mechanical stresses on skin, bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles and nerves that cause tissue deformation and (in extreme cases) tissue failure. Chemical stresses also produce biomechanical responses associated with metabolism and tissue repair. Physical stressors may produce pain and impair work performance. Chronic pain and impairment requiring medical attention may result from extreme physical stressors or if there is not sufficient recovery time between successive exposures. A recent study shows that physical office clutter could be an example of physical stressors in a workplace setting.

Psychological Stressors

Stressors occur when an individual is unable to cope with the demands of their environment (such as crippling debt with no clear path to resolving it). Generally, stressors take many forms, such as: traumatic events, life demands, sudden medical emergencies, and daily inconveniences, to name a few. There are also a variety of characteristics that a stressor may possess (different durations, intensity, predictability, and controllability).

Measuring Psychological Stress

Due to the wide impact and the far-reaching consequences of psychological stressors (especially their profound effects on mental well-being), it is particularly important to devise tools to measure such stressors. Two common psychological stress tests include the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) devised by American psychologist Sheldon Cohen, and the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) or the Holmes-Rahe Stress Scale. While the PSS is a traditional Likert scale, the SRRS assigns specific predefined numerical values to stressors.

Biological Responses to Stressors

Traumatic events or any type of shock to the body can cause an acute stress response disorder (ASD). The extent to which one experiences ASD depends on the extent of the shock. If the shock was pushed past a certain extreme after a particular period in time ASD can develop into what is commonly known as Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There are two ways that the body responds biologically in order to reduce the amount of stress an individual is experiencing. One thing that the body does to combat stressors is to create stress hormones, which in turn create energy reservoirs that are there in case a stressful event were to occur. The second way our biological components respond is through an individuals cells. Depending on the situation our cells obtain more energy in order to combat any negative stressor and any other activity those cells are involved in seize.

Predictability and controllability

When individuals are informed about events before they occur, the magnitude of the stressor is less than when compared to individuals who were not informed of the stressor.

For example, an individual would prefer to know when they have a deadline ahead of time in order to prepare for it in advance, rather than find out about the deadline the day of. In knowing that there is a deadline ahead of time, the intensity of the stressor is smaller for the individual, as opposed to the magnitude of intensity for the other unfortunate individual who found out about the deadline the day of. When this was tested, psychologists found that when given the choice, individuals had a preference for the predictable stressors, rather than the unpredictable stressors.

Additionally, the degree to which the stressor can be controlled plays a variable in how the individual perceives stress. Research has found that if an individual is able to take some control over the stressor, then the level of stress will be decreased. During this study, it was found that the individuals become increasingly anxious and distressed if they were unable to control their environment.

As an example, imagine an individual who detests baths in the Middle Ages, taking a bath. If the individual was forced to take the bath with no control over the temperature of the bath (one of the variables), then their anxiety and stress levels would be higher than if the individual was given some control over the environment (such as being able to control the temperature of the water).

Based on these two principles (predictability and control), there are two hypotheses that attempt to account for these preferences; the preparatory response hypothesis and safety hypothesis attempt to accommodate these preferences.

Preparatory response hypothesis

The idea behind this hypothesis is that an organism can better prepare for an event if they are informed beforehand, as this allows them to prepare for it (biologically). In biologically preparing for this event beforehand, the individual is able to better decrease the event’s aversiveness. In knowing when a potential stressor will occur (such as an exam), the individual could, in theory, prepare for it in advance, thus decreasing the stress that may result from that event.

Safety hypothesis

In this hypothesis, there are two time periods, one in which is deemed safe (where there is no stressor), and one which is deemed unsafe (in which the stressor is present). This is similar to procrastination and cramming; during the safe intervals (weeks before an exam) the individual is relaxed and not anxious, and during the unsafe intervals (the day or night before the exam) the individual most likely experiences stress and anxiety.

Relation between Stressors and Stress

The workplace is an important source of both demands and pressures causing stress, and structural and social resources to counteract stress. Long hours, tight deadlines, and ever-increasing demands can leave you feeling worried, drained, and overwhelmed. And when stress exceeds your ability to cope, it stops being helpful and starts causing damage to your mind and body as well as to your job satisfaction.

Pending work, target completion, tensions can cause stress. Job insecurity plays a major role. In Mumbai, there are many offices where there is a large number of politics. It is the politics which plays an important role. A little mistake, you are fired that is the only reason. Besides, there are two other sources of stress, or buffers against stress: relationships at work, and the organisational culture. Managers who are critical, demanding, unsupportive or bullying create stress, whereas a positive social dimension of work and good team work reduces it.

If stress on the job is interfering with your work performance, health, or personal life, it’s time to take action. No matter what you do for a living, or how stressful your job is, there are plenty of things you can do to reduce your overall stress levels and regain a sense of control at work.

Common causes of workplace stress include:

• Fear of being laid off
• More overtime due to staff cutbacks
• Pressure to perform to meet rising expectations but with no increase in job satisfaction
• Pressure to work at optimum levels.
• Lack of control over how you do your work

Reasons of Stress at Work Place

• Fear of being laid off: Due to heavy competition, it is very difficult to get a job who pays a good salary. However, once you are inside the organisation, the fear comes is the fear of being laid off? Every year, more than 57% of people in Mumbai are being laid off due to employee available in lesser pay and more qualified than the current employees, or being suppressed by the boss, or for some other reasons. Thus the stress amount increases of losing a job or just being laid off.
• More overtime due to staff cutbacks: Sometimes, due to shortage of staff, employees has to work more than their actual hours. Sitting in the front of the Computer for more than 9 hours not only give them the eye stress, but back pain, shoulder pain and tiredness where they cannot focus on their family life. In the end, whatever they earn in the month end, the expenses are more towards the medical bills then the investments.
• Pressure to perform to meet rising expectations but with no increase in job satisfaction: Sometimes to seek a promotion, an individual works 24*7 which not only decreases the promotion chances but also puts him to medical stress.
• Pressure to work at optimum level. There are hardly few organisations who has less stress load than the actual one. There are organisations who provide gym, indoor and outdoor games facilities, meditation rooms, etc. so that the employee should not feel stressed all the time. But when there is the time for appraisal, the pressure is always there to achieve the goal.
• Lack of control over how you do your work: Sometimes excessive work gives you more stress and due to which you feel irritation, suffocation and even isolation no matter you are with your family or friends. Thus planning is needed, exercise is in need as well as proper nutrition is expected to do proper and a productive work.

Stress at work warning signs

When you feel overwhelmed at work, you lose confidence and may become angry, irritable, or withdrawn. Other signs and symptoms of excessive stress at work include:

• Feeling anxious, irritable, or depressed
• Apathy, loss of interest in work
• Problems sleeping
• Fatigue
• Trouble concentrating
• Muscle tension or headaches
• Stomach problems
• Social withdrawal
• Loss of sex drive
• Using alcohol or drugs to cope

Beat workplace stress by reaching out

Sometimes the best stress-reducer is simply sharing your stress with someone close to you. The act of talking it out and getting support and sympathy bespecially face-to-face can be a highly-effective way of blowing off steam and regaining your sense of calm. The other person doesn’t have to “fix” your problems; they just need to be a good listener.

Turn to co-workers for support. Having a solid support system at work can help buffer you from the negative effects of job stress. Just remember to listen to them and offer support when they are in need as well. If you don’t have a close friend at work, you can take steps to be more social with your coworkers. When you take a break, for example, instead of directing your attention to your smartphone, try engaging your colleagues.

Lean on your friends and family members. As well as increasing social contact at work, having a strong network of supportive friends and family members is extremely important to managing stress in all areas of your life. On the flip side, the lonelier and more isolated you are, the greater your vulnerability to stress.

Considering stress as a response led to some of the confusion in terms: originally the term “response to stressors” was used, to be shortened to the more convenient “stress response.”  It was then an easy step to further shorten this to “stress,” thereby effectively moving stress to refer to the response rather than the stimulus. There is then a logical circularity in explaining a person’s response to stressors, which are usually defined as anything that elicits a response. There is a tautology if stress is defined as a response to something that is stressful.

Harold G. Wolff (1898-1962).  In 1953, Harold Wolff published “Stress and Disease”, an early book on psychosomatics. He did not fully define stress, seeing it as “man’s response to many sorts of noxious agents and threats.” The term “response” suggests something active, and should not be equated with passive strain. “I have used the word [stress] in biology to indicate that state within a living creature which results from the interaction of the organism with noxious stimuli or circumstances, i.e., it is a dynamic state within the organism; it is not a stimulus, assault, load, symbol, burden, or any aspect of environment, internal, external, social or otherwise.”

Martin Seligman.  Seligman’s studies on rats further contributed to freeing stress literature from a mechanistic view of stress as a stimulus – response process.  “Exposing animals to inescapable, uncontrollable electric shocks seriously impairs the avoidance or escape behaviours of the same animals when they are re-exposed in an environment in which the shocks are controllable by the animal. It seemed to be the animal’s perception of the event that makes it stressful”.  Seligman here uses “perception” to refer to recognition and interpretation of stimuli based on the animal’s memory.  Recall, also, the work on “executive monkeys.”

Hans Selye originated using the word stress after completing his medical training at the University of Montreal in the 1920s. He observed that no matter what his hospitalised patients suffered from, they all had one thing in common as they all had fever. In his view, they all were under physical stress.

He recommended that stress was a nonspecific strain on the body caused by irregularities in normal body functions. This stress resulted in the release of stress hormones. He called this the “General Adaptation Syndrome” (a closer look at general adaptation syndrome, our body’s short-term and long-term reactions to stress).

In short, stress is the body’s reaction to harmful situations whether they’re real or perceived. When you feel helpless, a chemical reaction occurs in your body that allows you to act in a way to prevent injury. This reaction is known to be as “fight or flight,” or the stress response. During stress response, your heart rate increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises. Stress can also benefit you to rise to meet challenges.

Features of Stress

Stress can affect all aspects of your life, including your emotions, behaviours, thinking ability, and physical health. No part of the body is immune. But, because people handle stress differently, symptoms of stress can vary. Some of the features of stress are mentioned as follows:

• Mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders
• Cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, high blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms, heart attacks, and stroke
• Obesity and other eating disorders
• Menstrual problems
• Sexual dysfunction, such as impotence and premature ejaculation in men and loss of sexual desire in both men and women
• Skin and hair problems, such as acne, psoriasis, and eczema, and permanent hair loss
• Gastrointestinal problems, such as GERD, gastritis, ulcerative colitis, and irritable colon

Types of Stress

Acute Stress

Acute stress is the greatest common method of stress. It comes from demands and pressures of the current past and estimated demands and pressures of the near future. Acute stress is inspiring and exciting in small doses, but too much is exhausting. Acute stress symptoms are recognised by most people. Going home from the office by waiting to leave on time so that food can be cooked and can be served to the family or going to attend the parents meeting of the child in the school. Acute stress doesn’t have enough time to do the wide damage associated with long-term stress. The most common symptoms are:

• Emotional distress includes three emotions and it is a mixture of anger or irritability, anxiety and depression.
• Muscular problems including tension headache, back pain, jaw pain and the muscular tensions that lead to pulled muscles and tendon and ligament problems.
• Stomach, gut and bowel problems such as heartburn, acid stomach, flatulence, diarrhoa, constipation and irritable bowel syndrome.
• Acute stress can happen to anyone which is curable and manageable.

Episodic Acute Stress

Episodic acute stress leads to the people who are always in hurry. In reality, they are lazy who love to do the work at the end moment. They make big promises, try to reach the sky, but somewhere the landing gets stuck where there is no way to be either on the earth or in the sky.

It is absolute for the people with acute stress reactions to be over aroused, short-tempered, irritable, anxious and tense. Often, they describe themselves as having “a lot of nervous energy”. Always in a hurry, they tend to be sudden, and sometimes their irritability comes across as hostility. Interpersonal relationships decline rapidly when others respond with real hostility. The workplace becomes a very stressful place for them.

There is a “free-floating, but well rationalised form of hostility, and almost always a deep-seated insecurity”. Such personality characteristics would seem to create frequent episodes of acute stress for the Type A individual. Friedman and Rosenman found Type A’s to be much more likely to develop coronary heart disease than Type B’s, who show an opposite pattern of behaviour.

Another form of episodic acute stress comes from ceaseless worry. “Worry warts” see disaster around every corner and pessimistically forecast catastrophe in every situation. The world is a dangerous, unrewarding, punitive place where something awful is always about to happen. These “awfulisers” also tend to be over aroused and tense, but are more anxious and depressed than angry and hostile.

The symptoms of episodic acute stress are the symptoms of extended over arousal:

Persistent tension headaches, migraines, hypertension, chest pain and heart disease. Treating episodic acute stress requires intervention on a number of levels, generally requiring professional help, which may take many months.

Often, lifestyle and personality issues are so ingrained and habitual with these individuals that they see nothing wrong with the way they conduct their lives. They blame their woes on other people and external events. Frequently, they see their lifestyle, their patterns of interacting with others, and their ways of perceiving the world as part and parcel of who and what they are.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress is not as thrilling and exciting as acute stress. This is the grinding stress that wears people away day after day, year after year.

Chronic stress spoils body, minds and lives. It causes chaos through long-term abrasion. This type of stress is found in failure of marriage, job stress, extra marital affairs, etc. It’s the stress that the never-ending “troubles” have brought.

Chronic stress comes when a person never sees a way out of a miserable situation. It’s the stress of unrelenting demands and pressures for seemingly interminable periods of time. With no hope, the individual gives up searching for solutions.

Some chronic stresses stem from traumatic, early childhood experiences that become internalised and remain forever painful and present. Some experiences profoundly affect personality.

The worst aspect of chronic stress is that people get used to it. They forget it’s there. People are immediately aware of acute stress because it is new; they ignore chronic stress because it is old, familiar, and sometimes, almost comfortable.

Chronic stress is harmful and it spoils one through suicide, violence, heart attack, stroke and, perhaps, even cancer. People wear down to a final, fatal breakdown. Because physical and mental resources are exhausted through long-term attrition, the symptoms of chronic stress are difficult to treat and may require extended medical as well as behavioural treatment and stress management.

Burnout may be as a result of excessive stress but they do not mean the same thing. Burnout is a cycle of negative emotions, paralysis and withdrawal. It is the body’s response to putting too much effort into something without taking in what you require to restore yourself. It is mental, emotional and physical exhaustion that leads to diminished interest in performing tasks.

Physical symptoms of burnout include having low energy, headaches, muscle tension, digestive disorders, frequent colds and changes in one’s sleep patterns. Its mental symptoms include feeling sad, inadequate, frustrated, unappreciated and irritable. These symptoms can result in withdrawal, accidents, increased sick days and crying. One may increase their consumption of food or alcohol to soothe themselves.

Stress on the other hand, involves too many pressures that demand too much from you either physically or psychologically. Stressed people though can still see a light at the end of the tunnel, they just often can’t figure a way to get to it.

Stress is just a day-to-day experience but burnout is a more serious consequence of the build-up of too much stress which causes the individual person to shut down.

If stress persists on a full scale for a long period of time, there are increased risks of burnout. Although stress is an essential pre-requisite for burnout, burnout is not necessarily the result of too much stress. For burnouts to occur there must be an additional psychological factor.

People who are stressed can often still function and do all that the tasks or jobs required of them. This is due to the fact that different people can bear different levels of stress for different lengths of time. This is quite a contrast to people experiencing a burnout. Burnout most times leads to a total shutdown of all systems in the body and it causes a person to become completely nonfunctional. Burnout causes people to experience long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in life as a whole.

Burnout

• It is characterized by disengagement
• The person’s emotions are blunted
• It gives one a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness
• It makes one lose motivation, ideals, and hope
• It leads to detachment and depression
• Its primary damage is emotional

Stress

• It is characterized by over engagement
• The person’s emotions are over reactive
• It gives one a feeling of urgency and hyperactivity
• It leads to loss of energy

Sometimes it may be difficult to cope with workplace stress, but the skills of handling stress changes from person to person. The cause of your stress and your approach to handle it may be way different from that of your friend.

Generally, we think that stress is related to something negative, but we don’t have to look at it that way. Some stress is helpful, actually to drive people towards job completion. As you may observe, stress in itself can be used for positive purposes. This type of stress is known as Eustress. In simple words, Eustress is the stress that leaves a positive effect, or is motivating in nature. It results in a positive outcome. Such stresses help people in getting good performances.

You can relate to this type of stress if you are familiar with the following scenarios:

• Running and winning a close race.
• Riding a big roller coaster ride.
• Watching a scary movie.

All these situations cause physical, emotional and mental strain, but these pressure scenarios release positive emotions and makes us happy. This is a form of stress too. So, stress is not always negative; we have positive stress too which makes our life dynamic, unlike the lives that people without any tension or stress live- dull, monotonous, and boring.

These kinds of stress are completely different from the stress disorders that people get exposed to in their professional lives. Workplace Stress is created from working in unsuitable and improper conditions and from working in an ill-suited job.

Job stress is heavily associated with workplace environment. Places like New York, Los Angeles, and London among many other municipalities acknowledge the strong relationship between job stress and heart attacks. Because workplace stress is the result of many complex interactions between an individual and a large systematically-operating organization, there are numerous theories propagated to explain the relation between both.

According to experts, there are five models that explain workplace stress, which are:

• Person Environment Fit Model
• Job Characteristics Model
• Diathesis-Stress Model
• Jobs-Demand Resources Model
• Effort-Reward Imbalance Model

Let us now discuss each of these models in detail.

Person Environment Fit Model

According to this model, a person starts to feel stress in a job where his aptitude, skills, abilities and resources are in-line with the necessities of their job. The job profile he is operating in should be in accordance to his needs, knowledge and skills-sets.

If these needs are not addressed, then it makes these employees “misfits” in that domain, which results in lagging behind in performances and not meeting management expectations. These employees end up with lower productivity, face isolation and resort to denial, as a defense mechanism.

Job Characteristics Model

This model proposes that for an employee to be successful in any job, he needs to have some degree of autonomy and he should be able to give a feedback which is heard. Such conditions result in job enrichment and employee loyalty. The absence of these factors can cause work disassociation and drops in productivity.

This model also specifies that numerous talented professionals lose their aptitude towards the same work that they had once been very interested in, and were good at. The main reason behind this was the attitude of the management.

Diathesis-Stress Model

This model makes a distinction between stressful job conditions and individual strains. Strains can be mental, physical or emotional and most of the times, these strains change from person to person.

The significant strains among them are:

• Excessive Workload
• Disagreeable Workplace Environments
• Lack of Autonomy
• Difficult Relationships with Coworkers
• Lack of Career Growth
• Low Chances of Personal Growth while Working and
• Harassment from Management.

Jobs-Demand Resources Model

This model posits that workplace stress can be associated to the difference of job demands and resources. Experienced at managerial levels, it is caused when a bully management expects managers to deliver high results with low resources.

In other words, there is a severely skewed ration between job demands and job resources. Even good managers cannot deal with this stress and end up stressed.

Effort-Reward Imbalance Model

This model focuses on the relation between efforts and rewards. When employees put in hard work, they expect management to reward their efforts. In absence of any such reward program, the employees get demotivated and underperform.

It is not enough in today’s world to expect good output from employees as a “part of the job”. Companies that think they are entitled to get good output from employees just because they pay them, need to realize that it is not paying, but compensating them for their time, i.e. the employees could have done something way more productive with the time they spend in the company.

Problems Caused by Stress Factors

Stress factors have the ability to induce a range of disorders, including psychological issues like depression, anxiety, etc. They also are the cause of emotional instability like irritation, dissatisfaction, tension and fatigue. In addition to that, workplace stress can cause changes in behavior and cognitive functioning like increased levels of aggression and concentration-lapses.

In situations where stress doesn’t cause any psychological or physical damage, it still accounts of big drops in productivity. Stressed-out employees yield poor performances, are less receptive, and engage in higher absenteeism. These conditions lead to deviant behavior, health-related expenses and increased chances of workplace injury.

The ability of an employee to cope with the number of hours expected of him to work, rate of production, performance standards, volume of work, and the deadlines that he is expected to deliver his output, all play a major role in creating stress. Doctors have observed a deeply negative impact on mental health of people who work in night shifts.

Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) is a high speed and high capacity railway corridor that are exclusively meant for the transportation of freight or in other words goods and commodities. DFC involves seamless integration of better infrastructure and state of the art technology. This article shares the economic benefits of Dedicated Freight Corridor and the Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) established in 2006 to oversee its development.

Dedicated Freight Corridor Benefits

Freight Transportation is the fulcrum in the growth of Indian Economy. A nation like India can benefit in the following areas due to Dedicated Freight Corridors.

• Logistics costs will be reduced
• Higher energy efficiency
• Faster movement of goods
• It is Environment friendly
• Helps in generating more employment
• Boost for Real Estate Sector

Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL)

• It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU).
• The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) is a business establishment operated by the Railways Ministry of the Government of India to work the dedicated freight corridors (DFCs).
• It engages in the planning and development, deployment of monetary resources, building, upkeep and the operation of the DFCs.
• The organisation was incorporated under the Companies Act, 1956 on 30th October 2006.
• DFCCIL has been assigned the status of ‘special purpose vehicle’ by the Indian government.

DFCCIL’s Mission

• To build a corridor with appropriate technology that enables Indian railways to regain its market share of freight transport by creating additional capacity and guaranteeing efficient, reliable, safe and cheaper options for mobility to its customers.
• To set up Multimodal logistic parks along the DFC to provide complete transport solution to customers.
• To support the government’s initiatives toward ecological sustainability by encouraging users to adopt railways as the most environment-friendly mode for their transport requirements.

Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC):

• It is a broad gauge corridor.
• The 1,504-km western freight corridor begins at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and stretches till the country’s largest container port Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, near Mumbai.
• In October 2006, a dedicated body, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has been established to carry out the project.
• The project will be funded by a soft loan of $4bn provided by Japan International Cooperation Agency under special terms for economic partnership (STEP).

Important places in this route:

1. It passes through Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Palanpur, Phulera and Rewari.
2. Passing through , Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Significance:

• The western DFC will separate freight and passenger traffic to increase the speed of freight movement.
• It will be used to transport fertilisers, food grains, salt, coal, iron & steel and cement.
• The project will eventually be linked to the Eastern DFC to form four hubs known as India’s Golden Quadrilateral including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.

Need of DFCs

Increased burden: Covering a total of 10,122 km, these corridors carry the heaviest traffic and are highly congested. The route carries 52% of passenger traffic and 58% of freight traffic, according to the Make-in-India report of 2017. Also, these routes are highly saturated, with line capacity utilisation reaching as high as 150%.

Rise in demand: Considering increased transport demands, overtly congested routes and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with road transport, these freight corridors will help reduce the cost and allow faster transportation.

Revenue generation: They will open new avenues for investment, as this will lead to the construction of industrial corridors and logistic parks along these routes.

A deep water port, from its nomenclature can be suggested that is different from regular ports in respect of the depth of water.  A port is usually an area or platform entered into from the sea, by vessels, boats, ships, which also allows for protected staging and anchoring or docking for these ships to load and unload consignments and continue up towards its destination.

However a deep water port is usually made up for the usage of very large and heavily loaded ships. The depth of water helps get them access to the deepwater ports. Regular ports are by and large of recreational types where the water is not more than 20 feet deep, whereas deep water port is compatible with the large heavy loaded ships which may require the water to be 30 feet deep or even more.

The concerned authorities of the deepwater ports are responsible for oil spill prevention, containment and cleanup, effect on oceanographic currents patterns, potential dangers from waves, winds, weather, and geological conditions etc.

Deepwater Port Facilities:

• Modern diversified facilities
• Deep sheltered waters
• Track record in oil and gas
• On and offshore renewable support
• Premier Cruise destinations
• Good communication links
• Skilled labour force
• 24 hour access

Double-stack rail transport is a form of intermodal freight transport where railroad cars carry two layers of intermodal containers. Introduced in North America in 1984, double stack has become increasingly common there, being used for nearly seventy percent of United States intermodal shipments. Using double stack technology, a freight train of a given length can carry roughly twice as many containers, sharply reducing transport costs per container. On most North American railroads, special well cars are used for double-stack shipment to reduce the needed vertical clearance and to lower the center of gravity of a loaded car. In addition, the well car design reduces damage in transit and provides greater cargo security by cradling the lower containers so their doors cannot be opened. A succession of larger container sizes have been introduced to further increase shipping productivity on shipments within North America.

Double-stack rail operations are growing in other parts of the world, but are often constrained by clearance and other infrastructure limitations.

Sizes and clearances

Double-stack cars come in a number of sizes, related to the standard sizes of the containers they are designed to carry. Well lengths of 12.19 m (40.0 ft), 14.63 m (48.0 ft) and 16.15 m (53.0 ft) are most common. Heights range from 2.44 m (8 ft 0 in) to 2.90 m (9 ft 6 in)(“high cube”).

Double stack requires a higher clearance above the tracks, or structure gauge, than do other forms of rail freight. Double-stack cars are most common in North America where intermodal traffic is heavy and electrification is less widespread; thus overhead clearances are typically more manageable. Nonetheless, North American railroads have invested large sums to raise bridges and tunnel clearances along their routes and remove other obstacles to allow greater use of double stack trains and to give them more direct routes.

CSX lists three clearance heights above top of rail for double stack service:

• Doublestack 1 — 18 ft 2 in (5.54 m)
• Doublestack 2 — 19 ft 2 in (5.84 m)
• Doublestack 3 — 20 ft 2 in (6.15 m)

The last clearance offers the most flexibility, allowing two high cube containers to be stacked.

Dwarf Containers

China had started to use reduced size containers to be stacked onto normal containers to allow transport under 25 kV electrification. It did not allow for combination with hi-cube containers though.

India has started to build a series of dwarf container for domestic transport to be run under 25 kV electrification. With 6 feet 4 inches (1,930 mm) they are 662 mm shorter but 162 mm wider than ISO shipping containers while still allowing for 67% more capacity. The chosen width is comparable to the American 53-foot containers.

India: Mundra Port and Pipavav Port operate double-stacked diesel trains on 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge using flat wagons. It is one of only three countries[which?] to commercially double stack 9 ft 6 in (2,896 mm) tall (high cube) containers on a train. India is building the Dedicated Freight Corridor, an economical and environmentally friendly electrical traction-based double-stack freight railway network which can transport international standard containers.

Unit Trains

A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are distinct from wagonload trains, which comprise differing numbers of cars for various customers.

Unit trains enable railways to compete more effectively with road and internal waterway transport systems. Time and money is saved by avoiding the complexities and delays that would otherwise be involved with assembling and disassembling trains at rail yards near the origin and destination. Unit trains are particularly efficient and economical for high-volume commodities. Since they often carry only one commodity, cars are of all the same type; often the cars are identical.

Unit trains are typically used for the transportation of bulk goods. These can be solid substances such as:

• Track ballast or gravel
• Iron ore from mines to ports or steel mills
• Coal from mines to power stations
• Coke from coking plants to steel mills
• Steel

Bulk liquids are transported in unit trains made up of tank cars, such as:

• Crude oil from oil fields to refineries (can be [60,000 barrels (9,500 m3)] of oil in a unit train of 100 tank cars)
• Mineral oil products from the refineries to the storage facilities
• Ethanol from ethanol plants to motor fuel blending facilities
• Molten sulfur (non-US:sulphur)

Food, such as:

• Wheat
• Corn
• Fruit juice
• Refrigerated food

Other examples include:

• Shipping containers, generally between a port and a truck depot
• Cars in autoracks
• Aggregate
• Military Equipment (weapons)
• Waste (garbage), usually for recycling, often metals or paper
• Potash
• Taconite
• Mail
• Sand for hydraulic fracturing

Pros of Outsourcing Logistics

Relationships

The goal of the 3PL is to develop a long-term strategic alliance with the client. Contrast this model with a transportation broker, which is typically only focused only on moving freight from Point A to point B on a transactional basis. A 3PL will be invested in your company on a deeper level.

In fact, 91% of 3PL users and 97% of 3PL providers perceive their relationships with each other to be successful. They also find that their work together tends to yield positive results, as reported in the 2017 Third Party Logistics Study from CapGemini and Penn State University.

Access to Expertise

Because of its breadth of experience, a 3PL will include people, processes and technology at a level beyond what a single company can develop independently.

Despite fluctuating capacity, increased shipper demands and disruptions within the industry, a 3PL has the experience to manage the supply chain using information and analytics to drive decisions. The 3PL will help you figure out the most efficient routing for your goods. You will have expert help as you assess options, such as truck-load vs. less-than-truckload vs. parcel carriers, are the best choices to serve customers and manage costs. The 3PL can also take over inventory management and warehouse operations as needed.

Access to Technology

One of the major advantages of outsourcing logistics to a 3PL is the access you will gain to the latest technology. One example is the Internet of Things (IoT) functionality that is already becoming standard in many supply chains. In fact, 46% of respondents from supply-chain-intensive industries say IoT will be the driver of significant change, or transformational at the very least, according to the 2016 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey.

The ability to manage IT-based services is a necessary core competency of leading 3PLs. Shippers come to rely heavily on the IT services that 3PL’s provide. These services are always integrated into the customer’s system, typically replacing legacy systems and processes with a mix of cloud-based and commercial solutions along with proprietary innovations. This creates a powerful custom technology stack.

By outsourcing logistics to a 3PL, you will also have the advantage of real-time inventory updates. Think of the benefits this will have for field service, healthcare, retail and other forward-deployed inventory strategies. For instance, end users will now have the ability to access inventory via mobile devices, which will shorten field service response times.

Cost Reduction

With greater visibility into the supply chain, a 3PL can help reduce inventory and reverse logistics costs. It will also increase cash flow through faster fulfillment. The organization is now able to react faster to customer demands, especially with a forward-deployed inventory model and a network of couriers and expedited carriers. Additionally, 3PL’s can integrate reverse logistics in order to return items to inventory faster, helping reduce carrying costs.

Are you trying to accomplish just-in-time manufacturing and retail restocking? A 3PL can streamline the supply chain to remove the need for contingency inventory.

A 3PL also has the ability to provide a range of services under one single point of contact. This will virtually eliminate the internal costs of supporting accounts for warehousing, fulfillment and transportation across multiple vendors.

Scalability

A 3PL can scale up or down quickly to respond to demand without sunk costs for personnel, real estate or equipment. 3PL’s are built to manage time-sensitive deliveries, lean supply chains and shorter product lifecycles. Another advantage of working with a 3PL is their ability to react quickly when consumer demand or other variables occur that will require strategic changes.

As your business grows, the 3PL will be able to scale accordingly. For early-stage companies, the 3PL can provide the requisite level of service without the capital investment. While a company grows organically or through mergers and acquisitions, the 3PL can add services and capacity as necessary.

A 3PL can also support rapid expansion into new markets or new supplier sources, such as expanding e-commerce, buy online-pick up in store and other omnichannel initiatives.

Cons of Outsourcing Logistics

Loss of Control

Most 3PLs adopt the client’s branding for assets and employees, so typically the relationship is invisible to customers. You still might fear the unknown when turning over your logistics operations to a third party. The 3PL will be responsible for a significant portion of your relationship with your customers. Any lapses in service will reflect on your company, not the 3PL. However, contracts and service level agreements can help address this and prevent issues before they occur.

Strategic Misalignment

There are no magic bullets to supply chain success. It’s critical for both parties in a 3PL relationship to share an understanding of the strategy as well as the KPI’s that drive value. In a meaningful relationship, the 3PL is able to provide innovative solutions and a demonstrable competitive advantage. The 3PL must be treated as a strategic partner, not as a perfunctory cost center.

On the other hand, the 3PL must be prepared to engage the client at that level and not see the relationship as an opportunity to maximize its own asset utilization. The 3PL must be a true multi-service provider, and be willing to seek outside expertise to handle new challenges, such as international shipping.

Communication and shared expectations are the keys to a productive 3PL relationship. Clients of 3PLs must understand their own internal requirements and organizational structure to engage the 3PL for long-term success.

Integrating Information Technology

Integration with IT can be the biggest challenge. Data must flow between systems, and all parties must have deep visibility to manage and optimize the network. Clients must be willing to adapt to new systems to allow for integration. Lack of buy-in from internal IT often leads to failed relationships.

Costs

While outsourcing may be seen as a cost-cutting measure, in reality, it is a value-producing decision. The client must fully understand the cost implications. The return on investment can be derived from value affecting more than the client’s supply chain.