Benefits of early OMS implementation
Early OMS
Early OMS provides address-based dispatching of trouble calls and outages using the
county supplied street network. Although automatic determination of a probable outage
device is not possible with the Early OMS, trouble calls can be collected and entered into
the system. The calls are graphically displayed over an intelligent street map for address
matching. Visual inferencing enables the Dispatcher to determine outages, and dispatch
crews to the locations. We have added three raster layers of "dumb" graphics that allows
the dispatchers to view the District's 69, 21, and 12 kV facilities as an overlay on top of
the County landbase. These layers can easily be turned on or off by the Dispatcher as
needed. The effort enabled early exposure to SMUD's dispatching team - providing
business users the opportunity to acquire product knowledge and become more system
savvy.
Figure 2. Crew location displayed in Early OMS
Benefits
We have found the application to be useful as it is for crew management during storm
situations. During storms, information is gathered (manually) into logical outages.
When it is determined that the outage requires crew response, the outage event is
assigned to a specific crew and is tracked using the "Early OMS ". As a crew is given the
work it can be visually tracked on the map and its status viewed in the Unit Monitor in a
tabular format. To make this system work, the crews must notify the dispatcher of the
status of the jobs they are working on and when they are moving on to the next job
location.
Early OMS includes an intranet application, InService NetViewer, that allows us to get
information to others in the District as long as they have access to a PC with an internet
browser. This has proved to be very valuable during storm situations by allowing our
media folks and Management the ability to see the status of outages and crews. It has the
added advantage of providing this information without the need for these individuals to
come to the Dispatch Center where they may interfere with restoration efforts.
Figure 3 Early OMS Intranet Application
Because InService provides a full suite of workforce management functions in addition to
OMS, we taking advantage of the Scheduling functionality to input work planned for a
later date. The information about the job and the crew is placed in the scheduler by the
supervisor responsible for the work. The day that the job is scheduled it will
automatically pop into the event monitor on the Dispatcher's workstations allowing them
to see work planned for the crew for that day. Right now, we are using this to track the
work that is scheduled for weekends. This also has the advantage of allowing the on-call
supervisor to view from home the jobs that are being worked and the crews working on
them using their SecureID cards and Netviewer. The supervisor can also monitor the
crews work-time to track the number of hours they have worked.
Figure 4. Scheduling future work in Early OMS
Special skills held by individuals are also defined within the system and persons with
these skills can be found from within the "Early OMS" by doing a skills search.
EXAMPLE: If a backhoe operator is needed to assist on a job, the Dispatcher can, use
the skills search to list of District personnel qualified to operate a backhoe. The same
holds true for other skills stored in the system.
Figure 5. Skill Search Query
Figure 6. Skill Search Results
