Integrating automation

 

WHEN ENERGYUNITED SET OUT TO FIND AN AUTOMATED staking (or work management) package, we knew we also wanted to be able to integrate all of our current systems and applications, in order to save time and money. Because we are a cooperative, it is imperative that we keep costs as low as possible for our membership and establish processes that maximize the return on all investments we make.

Additionally, our members enjoy one of the highest reliability rates in the industry, so it was important for us to keep that stability of service for our members as we added technology that would be utilized in the field.

EnergyUnited is located in North Carolina, and is the 15th largest rural electric cooperative in the United States. Our service territory covers 19 counties and encompasses the suburbs of three of the state's largest cities: Charlotte, Winston-Salem and Greensboro. There are approximately 12,000 miles of line and 120,000 customers in our region. Our strategic technology plan provided for tight integration of all of our systems, so this became central to our requirements when we reviewed the market for our automated work management package.

Project planning

When we began this project in 2008, we had just completed the installation of our outage management system (OMS), and felt that an automated design system would be a complementary fit in our overall system architecture, integrating our customer information system (CIS), our financials and work order system, and our geographical information system (GIS).

To maximize integration and return for all departments, we assembled a cross-functional team of employees from our information technology, mapping, operations, staking, accounting and customer care departments to define the system requirements, including workflow management, streamlined data entry and secured system access across the company.

Throughout the life of the project, we took an approach of considering and incorporating feedback from our stakeholders throughout the cooperative. This was done informally as well as through a series of regular team meetings. Employee satisfaction increased, mostly because staff could see their suggestions at work firsthand in the software.

Our primary project goals were to increase the visibility of member requests, strengthen service by giving members instant order status, and reduce the lifecycle for a job from planning to completion. It was also important that the new system fully integrate with our existing technology to eliminate redundant efforts required to update multiple systems.

Coordinating processes

Efficiency is particularly important in work order automation. With most staking packages, the staking crew has to start the job in the CIS before designing. However, that's not the case for EnergyUnited. For us, it was important that the staking team be able to initiate jobs out in the field, allowing them to respond to new requests quickly.

With our vendors, we implemented a business process in which the staking team can create the work order first in one program and then send it through another process to generate the job. Although our business process is somewhat unique, we use interfaces modeled on standard transfer schemas. This approach allows the staking system to serve as a data repository for our CIS and financials, updating service orders and jobs in real time.

Integration helps save time in a couple of ways. Prior to this project, when EnergyUnited's staking sheets were hand drawn, everything for each job had to be entered into the work order system unit by unit, quantity by quantity. Now, when units are staked in the field using a pen tablet and later synched at the office, one keystroke sends all the entered data to the financial system. All construction unit data in that system is mirrored in the staking software. Units and materials are generated in a pick list from two processes, so the units don't have to be selected one at a time.

To estimate work order costs, EnergyUnited has one large master set of units with different pricing structures for utility labor versus contract crew labor, requiring a lot of behind-the-scenes computations to generate an estimate. Previously, providing accurate estimates with different labor resources proved to be quite challenging and time-consuming, as only one labor value could be used at a time when construction units were staked. Now, because our project team clearly defined and prioritized this requirement, we have the ability to define unit by unit, job by job, or any combination of the two, the labour resources in order to provide an accurate estimate in half the time.

Job status visibility has greatly increased, as any employee can view the status of any job at any given time. For our customer care team, it was important to have work order data available in their CIS web application, which was already in place and works well for that team. So all relevant data about a job is relayed to the CIS from the staking system as soon as it comes back from the field, allowing the employee to see the job status, the owner of the order and the staking sheet in the web-based application. This enhancement provides a great value to the member, as our customer care department can now give immediate status of service orders. This used to be an inefficient, multi-step process that involved calling multiple employees prior to finding the status of the member's service order request.

Improving data quality and consistency

Another element of our project was to improve the quality and consistency of data going into the GIS, which is reflected as well in the CIS and OMS. In one small example, let's say we're staking a fuse on a tap, and that fuse somehow was missed when manually entered in the GIs If an outage did occur in the OMS, which automaticaly predicts the possible device out, the system would not predict the fuse as the cause of the outage because it did not exist on the map.

Instead, it will incorrectly predict a different device upstream as the cause of the outage. In that case, the OMS would show more members without service than there actually were.

The updated IT infrastructure improved and streamlined the work order process by integrating applications between departments. This is invaluable for communicating changes to work orders and helps reduce errors and losses.

Benefits realized

Implementing this total system architecture took between seven and eight months, but because we had put in the effort up front to clearly define goals and processes, it went according to plan and the benefits appeared quickly.

The work order process is more efficient because data has to be input only once, reducing duplication of data, errors and eliminating misplaced work orders. Staking-to-construction time was cut in half. And because of the workforce management tools, we have the ability to create contingency plans for employees who are unavailable. As long as the replacement employee has a tablet, he can see all the data for a given site and pick up exactly where the first employee has left off.

One of the biggest unexpected advantages to having an integrated mobile work-force management system is having a wealth of data for reporting, which helps determine workload and productivity. This is especially useful in light of the changing economy because it allows us to ensure that employees are working where our members need them most. We now have the ability to see all of our resources in action and the data to make smart decisions when shifting them accordingly.

Looking to the future

On the horizon is the capability to do mobile data exchange so that employees can be more productive in the field. Optical fiber cable is being run between substations and offices as we make preparations for building the necessary infrastructure. Until then, there's the satisfaction of having met our primary goals of increasing the visibility of member requests, giving members instant order status and reducing the lifecycle for a job from planning to completion.