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ASHBY de la Zouch in the English county of Leicestershire is not served by passenger trains, but that has not prevented it from having a railway station. Ashby Park is in fact located on a factory floor where Transmitton, an asset management company, has created a mock station to demonstrate one of its most promising products, integrated station management (ISM).

Transmitton, like the industry it serves, is in transition, and ISM is one of a portfolio of network management software products that could help it expand into continental Europe and beyond. The portfolio also includes network management (traction power control) and customer information systems (CIS). "What we are selling is asset management solutions, involving converting data into information, and information into action," said Mr Andy Baum, the company's business development manager.

The transitional state stems from two factors--the shrinking of the core business of traction power control in Britain and the trauma of being caught up in the financial and trading problems of its former parent company, Industrial Control Services (ICS). This latter situation led to the venture capital company, Alchemy, taking over Transmitton in August 2000, one month before ICS was de-listed from the London stock exchange.

Alchemy, which normally works towards turning a company around in four or five years and then selling it on, began the process at Transmitton, 55% of whose staff are graduate engineers, by calling a halt to some expensive ventures abroad. These included Line 1 of the Beijing Metro, for which Transmitton supplied the traction power supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) system.

This coincided with a contraction of the core business following completion of an [pounds sterling]8.5 million electrical control room centralisation project for Britain's London-Scotland East Coast Main Line (ECML)--involving a monitoring and control system from a control room in York, with a second bank of screens at Transmitton's Ashby de la Zouch headquarters to check on progress. Transmitton would like to offer this system in the rest of Europe.

# posted by Medical Information : 1:58 AM