“HAL ... What Have You Been Doing ... HAL?” The Geospatial Odyssey of two utilities from Detroit

The Present
The announcement on October 5, 1999 that DTE Energy would be acquiring MCN Energy Group brought with it the realization that two separate cultures would be merging and with it different work practices, systems, labor union locals, methodologies, processes, etc. One significant benefit with this merger is the fact that both companies have their roots in Detroit and their respective headquarters reside almost down the street from one another. In fact many of the executives have known each other for many years. Early in the process, a “Big Five” accounting firm was brought in to assist in the gathering of synergistic benefits that could benefit the new company. Brainstorming occurred whereby team leaders started a list of opportunities in major process / functional areas of each company. A selection process was done and Activity Teams established. The Activity / Opportunity Teams developed and analyzed what true improvements could strategically and / or financially provide shareholder value. In some cases, an opportunity would provide an enabling technology foundation, in others major savings in resources i.e. people, dollars, facilities.

One such team was the Mapping Activity Team. Each company selected a co-lead and additional participants including union representation. The Team went through a standardized methodology that was used to insure common logic, data gathering and alternative evaluation. From the study came an agreement as to the which alternative provided the best return and was then reviewed by the Executive Team. A summary of the recommendations is provided in the next section.

The Future

Detroit Edison michcon The transition teams from DTE and MCN identified numerous opportunities and synergies that could be gained from the systems and data assets that each has. From an AM/FM/GIS standpoint a common ground is the geography served by the companies. Both utilize a common AM/FM/GIS system platform, which is an automatic advantage over a merger with two different system vendors. During our team meetings came several short and long term opportunities which follow.

Short Term Opportunity 1 – Common Landbase & Address Intelligence
An overlap of approximately 1,100 square miles and 700,000 customers exist between the companies. An obvious short- term opportunity is to merge the landbase for the 700,000 customers in the 1,100 square mile geographic area. What was found is that since the land base at both companies has a common 2,000’ x 3,000’ grid based on Michigan’s State Plane Coordinate System NAD 27 that the acquisition and maintenance of land products and model could be accomplished for both companies under one process.

While MichCon has a very accurate, custom built address intelligence built into MARS, Detroit Edison uses a third party, with enhanced TIGER data, as a backdrop to assist their clients. The combined company will incorporate the MARS addressing scheme for the common area and each company will maintain their own addressing method in noncommon geography.

What was also found was that each company had warped in new landbase e.g. subdivisions, and model differences were obvious when we compared to two. In order to be consistent MichCon’s landbase will be used; however, all future updates will be done once and used for both gas and electric facilities.

Utilizing the MichCon landbase, which has all building shapes and addresses, will also provide geospatial coordinates whereby the Outage Management Application can utilize a transformer – to – customer matching scheme.

Short Term Opportunity 2 – Move to FRAMME 4.0 and Visual Basic
Both Detroit Edison and especially MichCon have had difficulty obtaining resources to do all the application development work since specialized / proprietary languages are used. By going to Visual Basic (VB) the combined company expects to see considerable improvements in productivity and availability of VB programmers. Two separate rule bases will be utilized, one electric and one gas, at least in the near future.

Longer Term Plans and Opportunities
The following opportunities are a list of applications and data / data maintenance opportunities that the combined company will have over each being independent.

Complete the North Central Michigan (MichCon territory) Conversion Project
Complete Detroit Phase 2 Residential Gas Services Project
Incorporate WMS (Detroit Edison) construction drawing routines for gas main and services. Decision on which WMS to be used in the future is pending.
Implement Detroit Edison interfaces for end products to gas clients.
Implement a landbase acquisition team that would bring “visualization” tools to gas and electric clients.
Combine GenIsyS / MARS updates / maintenance under one organization (pending negotiated agreement with unions).
Implement “redline” updates from the field via pen-based, laptop, PDA or mobile data terminals. Dock and upload to AM/FM/GIS.
Continue to expand use of “proposed state” facilities and land whereby everyone in the corporate-wide can see planned land modifications (e.g. urban renewal, subdivisions) and facility designs for both gas and electric.
Continue (Detroit Edison) and start (MichCon) incorporating GenIsyS / MARS system data using the Web for Economic Development, internal studies and searches, and external e-commerce opportunities.
Continue to develop applications for use by both electric and gas clients in conjunction with new technology and uses for DTE energy products.
Continue to develop gas code related applications. For example, Cathodic Protection, Main Renewal Analysis, Network/Load Analysis, Outage Analysis (gas) and Leak Survey.

The above represents a sampling of ideas and opportunities for system design and implementation.

Conclusion
Many “killer applications” await since the two companies will be able to combine their “intellectual property” to develop even better, and more cost effective corporate-wide applications in the future. Indeed, there is a bright future with new merged company. AM/FM/GIS has a significant role across the new enterprise integrating with various ERP modules. Detroit Edison has developed many, sometimes cutting edge, applications to assist the end client. MichCon has some things to be proud of as well in their efforts to get gas facilities information accessible to its numerous clients. The synergies will provide numerous geospatial journey benefits to our customers, employees and shareholders for years to come.

Reference
Cosgrove, Larry, 1995 “What is GenIsyS?