Gas Service Information at the Desktop
Source Preparation
Although Consumers Energy has 1.6 million gas services there were approximately 2.5 million
record cards because the information for each service could be contained on multiple cards. A
process was developed to convert historical information to one record, which would contain all
of the information about the active service and also show the location, size, material and vintage
of any previous service that had been renewed or retired. A cleanup process was used to ensure
the information that needed to be converted was readable and that the sketch on the service
record card was complete and dark enough to produce a good image when scanned. The
scrubbing team obtained lists of billing addresses from the company record system and used
them to produce labels showing the addresses, which were then matched up with the record card
when it was scrubbed. This significantly improved the matching process with the customer
record system.
Conversion
After the source preparation process was complete the scrubbed record was scanned at 400 dots
per inch into a CIT IV format. This information was then sent on tapes to the conversion vendor.
The scanned records were then printed and the information was keyed into a flat file to be
imported into the RDBMS database. The scanned record of the whole service card was then
cropped to include only the sketch showing the location of the service in relationship to the
building, the road right of way, and the gas main. When all of the conversion processes were
complete the information was then delivered from the conversion vendor in batches. The small
deliveries were then loaded into the database and the scanned images were loaded onto the SIMS
servers.
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