Utility company powers up savings

By John Cox, Network World, 08/16/04

A Canadian power company is saving about $500,000 using laptops and PDAs, with some third-party mobile applications, for 400 field workers.
The goal of this mobile computing project at Hydro One Networks in Toronto, Ont., is to switch from error-prone paper trails into fast, accurate digital data paths.
About 300 mobile devices have been deployed, 60% of them Symbol Technologies PPT 2800 touchscreen PDAs, 40% IBM ThinkPad T series notebooks. They're being used by 400 of the 600 field workers who handle maintenance and repairs at nearly 1,500 power substations throughout Ontario. The pilot testing started in spring of 2003, and additional handhelds will be deployed by year-end, company officials say.
The embrace of mobile computing means that information concerning trouble tickets and equipment repairs is updated at the end of each shift, instead of one to three days later. The data is more accurate, says Ian McIntyre, manager of program and workforce stations for the utility. Field workers no longer have to print, fill out, check, mail and fax pages of paper reports.
The results are savings in paper processing and more accurate maintenance data.
"We have almost eliminated all the paper processing," McIntyre says. The utility was able to cut two full-time positions as a result. Other savings were realized by no longer having to correct data and eliminating some ad hoc surveys of equipment at substations.
"Our quality measurements showed about 70% of the [paper-based] reports were getting back to the system [on a timely basis] and about 70% of the data was accurate. Now both of those measures are over 99%," he says.
That accuracy and timeliness is critical for the heavily regulated utility.
"Being regulated, we have to make submission to the Ontario Energy Board for rate [changes]," McIntyre says. "We have a set rate-of-return against our assets. To justify investments in maintenance and expansions, we have to show the status of our assets." The utility and the regulators now have a clearer idea of how to allocate maintenance resources and the costs of maintaining the transmission and distribution grid that covers 400,000 square miles.
And the utility does it without the added complications and costs of using cellular or wireless LAN connections. Hydro One's field workers plug their laptops into the corporate LAN when they report for work, download the day's work orders, visit substations and work offline. At the end of their shifts, they plug the computer into the office LAN, or sometimes dial in, to synchronize with several back-end enterprise applications. The most important of these applications is PassPort, a client/server asset management suite from Indus International.
The total cost of the project was just over $1 million, covering the handhelds, development work, training and three mobile applications from the Telispark Mobile Enterprise by Infowave. Using the applications, technicians download electronic work orders, link the orders with data on specific assets such as power transformers and file electronic inspection reports on the equipment through the PassPort server. The Infowave software stores the data on a built-in mobile database.
The Infowave software is a group of three applications specifically designed for an array of jobs that are part of the routine daily work of service technicians and others who travel to different locations for customer service or equipment repairs.
Infowave's mWorkManager lets Hydro One technicians organize, view, update and close out the downloaded work orders via a set of graphical displays, pull-down menus and lists.
The second application, mAsset, associates the work order with data - such as serial number, repair schedule and historical data - for example, about a specific transformer, breaker or other equipment. The third application of the suite, mInspect, lets the technician report on equipment conditions, using forms, checklists and typed entries.
As is often the case in mobile projects, work processes that flow smoothly on a desktop PC had to be streamlined for the mobile devices. One was the process of collecting the initial batch of work orders.
"We have thousands of these," McIntyre says. "Originally, a worker pulled them one at a time onto their screen. But if they had 100 of these, it was laborious to do this one at a time. Our PassPort tech support [team] created a PassPort screen to assign work orders in batches to given users. When the worker cradles his laptop or PDA, PassPort pushes down the relevant orders."



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