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GIS, WMS, and ERP Integration – The Right Touch Points
Douglas L. Laslo
Autodesk, Inc
111 McInnins Pkwy
San Rafael, CA 94952
Douglas L. Laslo
Autodesk, Inc
111 McInnins Pkwy
San Rafael, CA 94952
Abstract
Utilities are focusing more each year on the value of integration of IT systems. As GIS, WMS, and ERP solutions become more prevalent and mature within utilities, the push is to increase integration between them to capture more benefits. Proper integration between these solutions can mean significant benefits and improvements in the business process. What is “proper” integration and how is it achieved? The appropriate touch points between GIS, WMS, and ERP will be explored.
Introduction
In utility business, there is a significant amount of information and data involved in the process of adjusting and managing the distribution system infrastructure. This information and data is important to the corporation, but the management and updating of it should not be allowed to get in the way of the workforce’s ability to satisfy customer requirements as efficiently and effectively as possible. Unfortunately, in most utilities, far too much effort is spent writing or typing information and often re-writing or re-typing the same information into multiple systems or logging mechanisms. The tendency is for the workforce to cut corners and either not capture necessary information, or report incorrect information so long as the jobs can be completed as quickly as possible.
Inserting digital systems and automation into the utility process can have benefits. However, it often aggravates and adds to the problems and can cause the productivity of the workforce to diminish. Only when the automation is inserted into the workforce carefully with the ultimate goals focusing on the processes, are productivity gains likely.
Utility Business Drivers and Processes
As we look into the right places for WMS, GIS and ERP to be interfaced to share information, we will do this from the perspective of minimizing the effort required by the workforce to complete all of the information requirements in as transparent a manor as possible. Minimization of the work required to accomplish the business processes is a major factor for utilities in today’s economic climate. We will also look from the perspective of the activities associated with requests for new service which makes up 60-80 % of the activities pertaining to the distribution (wires) business.
First, lets take a look at the typical utility, and the systems that are generally in place from the perspective of handling requests for new service. Below are some of the systems or manual logs that are most often in place at the typical utility.
Typical Utility Systems or Manual Logs
Each system or manually logged information plays some important role within the life of the utility. But the fragmented sets of information often contain redundant information, often have conflicting information, and are difficult to reconcile.
WMS, GIS, and ERP Solutions
Today’s automated tools that are available for utility distribution business activities can greatly reduce the confusion of the work flow and improve productivity and efficiencies. Work Management Systems (WMS), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have matured and proven their value over the late 1990s. Many good implementations of these tools working together exist today as examples of technology improving business.
Work Management Systems typically sit at the hub of the activities and can act as the main point of contact and input by the workforce as jobs progress throughout the job life cycle. Implemented and interfaced correctly, the work management system can act as an important tool that benefits and assists the work process, while hiding most of the details of accounting, material, and status logging that are important for the corporate information sets.
Geographic Information Systems hold the story of how the infrastructure is configured and connected, as well as what additions and adjustments are planned. GIS technology properly implemented, can provide significant benefits and cost savings as the foundational infrastructure information set. Data capture and conversion costs are usually significant, and it is important that maintenance of the information occurs as part of the normal business process so that the value of the information is not lost over time. For that reason, integration of GIS especially with WMS is critical if all adjustments to the infrastructure are to be captured.
Enterprise Resource Planning systems usually include Materials Management, Property Accounting, and Customer Information Systems (CIS) /Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. These systems have the longest legacy within utility organizations and have been primarily utilized by corporate headquarters and customer service. Materials Management is the system that has been most closely related to the distribution operations business in the past.
Utility Business Work Flow
The concept of interfaces between these technologies will be reviewed from the perspective of the utility business process and the information either necessary or available throughout the work flow. The technical details of how these interfaces can be accomplished will not be discussed since the details would vary based on the products and vintages installed at each utility. To understand the details of the workflow being used for this discussion, and look for “The Right Touch Points” between WMS, GIS, and ERP, the following diagram outlines the process that most utilities traverse:
Utility Business Work Flow /Job Life Cycle Scenarios
When a customer requests new service, the request is typically taken by a customer service representative, and an application for new service is initiated in the CIS.
When the application for new service is entered into CIS, an interface between CIS and WMS would allow a work request to be created in the Work Management System without additional and redundant data entry. This is one area of potential savings for the utilities who are making entry of the customer request both in CIS and WMS.
There are additional interface and savings potential by adjusting the business process of the customer service representative or potentially the web site or other automated application process. It is possible to develop a group of questions, and a matrix based on the answers to those questions, that can identify the work request details, and also the accounting details pertaining to the job. With the script of questions in place, under most circumstances enough information can be obtained about the job to apply the proper accounting codes. Just after the request for service is received, the systems can have interacted through interfaces to WMS and ERP, and have the work request initiated in WMS, including all of the required accounting code information from the ERP Property Accounting System.
An interface between WMS and GIS could provide the design supervisor with the ability to see geographically where the work requests are relative to one another, and to the geographic areas covered by various internal employees or outside contract personnel. Additionally, the design supervisor could look at the details of the physical infrastructure in the particular area which may have some bearing on which designer would be best suited for the job. Under this scenario, the design supervisor could be interacting with the WMS interface, and GIS windows could open inside the WMS application to provide the geographic perspective. Additionally, it is possible for the GIS to have saved the geographic location of the work request, and to have placed a boundary at the location.
Another interface interaction would also be appropriate at this point if the WMS and GIS both have the concept of job stage or state. The action of assigning the job to a designer should promote the work request from the initiated stage, to the design stage. The interaction would occur in the WMS interface, but both the WMS and GIS should be kept in synch with the single promote action.
When the designer is ready to create the graphic design, the activity would be performed in the GIS. Most GIS vendors have graphic design packages or capabilities built into the GIS so that the design is held in a preliminary state until the new infrastructure is installed. After the work request has been completed, the preliminary information can then moved or promoted to the production data of map and infrastructure information.
During the design process an interface between GIS, WMS, and the Materials Management System in ERP can provide valuable information about the availability of materials. The WMS work request has a desired date that the customer expects service. As the designer develops the graphic design, the required materials for the design standards chosen are known. If any of the materials are not available, and cannot be available by the customer’s desired date, the MMS sends warning messages to the designer working on the design. The designer may then select alternate materials or design standards with materials that will be available. The potential exists for the Materials Management System inventory levels to be managed much more closely with this kind of interface and interaction between the systems and process.
At this point, an interface between the WMS and the ERP Materials Management and Accounting Systems allows generation of a preliminary material request with up-to-date costs for the appropriate date. Also, the designer promotes the work request to the approval stage in both WMS and GIS.
Once again, with the appropriate interfaces, the approver could review the work request on-line by opening a window into the GIS from the WMS interface, review the design, and promote the job to scheduling. There is significant savings of time and effort by not printing and routing a job package throughout the utility organization.
Also, an interface between WMS and ERP Materials would allow the work request material order to be finalized.
During construction, the field crew could have either a paper copy of the design and work request information, or a field computing device with the job sketch, work request cover sheet, and any other forms or docs required at the job site. After construction is complete, the field crews can mark up (redline) the graphic design with any adjustments or modifications that were made. The work request then goes back either the designer or the mapping group where the field crew mark ups can be incorporated into the graphic design. If a field computing device is used, the device could be docked at the end of the day, and all pertinent information could be uploaded to GIS, WMS, and ERP. The interfaces for this upload from field computing devices will be left for other discussions. Once the adjustments and information from the field are incorporated into the design, the work request is promoted to the production map and infrastructure database. This final promote to production is often called the job close-out process. When the as-built changes are made to the graphic design, the utility may want an additional work request estimate created so that the corrected list of materials and costs can be reconciled with the labor hours and materials that were actually charged to the job as it was actually constructed.
During the as-built adjustment and the final promote processes, there are several important interface points between GIS, WMS, and ERP. First, the materials actually charged to the job are now known in WMS from the interface with the Materials Management System. The WMS can then update the ERP Property Accounting System with the property units added to the utility’s property base. This interface is typically an incremental (unit in – unit out) type of interface and transaction. As an alternative, if the GIS database is considered the true representation of the utility’s installed infrastructure, the GIS could simply export an update of the new total property unit list for the given taxing boundary (or other significant polygon) affected by the work request. This would mean that the Property Accounting System was completely maintained by the infrastructure represented by the GIS.
The actual serial numbers for the equipment installed on the work request are now known, and the equipment records can now be updated. Other interface interactions might be to close out the work request in the Property Accounting System removing it from the valid status so that charges of labor or materials would no longer be valid.
Once the network configuration adjustments are confirmed, the network can be shares with the Outage Management and Engineering Analysis solutions used by the utility. While the topic of outage management falls just outside of the WMS, GIS, and ERP discussion, this is an important additional feature with significant benefits for utility organizations.
The GIS can pass information to the outage management and engineering analysis solutions by either exporting the entire circuits that are affected, or exporting the affected portions of each circuit included in the work request activities. Gathering the information of how the infrastructure is networked together out of the GIS database tables, and passing it to the outage management solution, continues to be necessary since the outage management systems typically store stored their information in real memory or in some specific (and often proprietary) file format for performance reasons.
The Benefits
All of the seven interface points mentioned in this paper can provide benefits to the utility business process, and reduce operating costs. The interfaces are discussed above in the order they occur in the work process. However, from the perspective of cost benefit prioritization, interfaces 3, 4 and 7 are several that can have the highest impact in reducing costs and improving the business process within utilities.
Interfaces 3 and 4 pertain to the interaction that can occur between GIS, WMS, and ERP. When GIS and WMS are closely integrated around the design process, the cost and material estimate can be completed while the design is being created. If the integration is done well, the additional overhead of estimating while designing is negligible. When these actions are done together, the need for a hand off to additional staff can be avoided. The savings can be significant.
In addition to the savings in combining the design and estimating activities, when the design is created in the same system that the information will ultimately be recorded in, the need for redundantly redrafting into the production map is removed. The production map and data are updated by simply promoting to production, once again avoiding handoff to additional staff.
By adding integration during the design process to ERP, customer service can be improved since the material issues for jobs with a critical customer need date would be known and dealt with during the design process.
Interface 7 is another interface that should have a relatively high priority within the utility environment. As stated above, interface 7 is just outside of the main focus of this paper, but much too valuable to be left unmentioned. When the network model for a utility company is available and managed in more than one system, the costs associated with the redundant maintenance of those models is significant.
More critical to the operations activities within the company, is the fact that the redundant copies of the models become out-of-synch and do not agree. This can cause significant confusion especially during emergency outage operations. The maintenance of the network model in the map base can be caused to occur as a part of the work design process. Maintenance of the outage network, when handled separately, is a stand-alone process that falls outside of the normal business process of supplying new service to customers. The process often gets delayed or is missed altogether. A business process that expects the management of the network model to occur in just one place, and to be propagated to the rest of the systems in the utility, is more likely to provide consistent good information to all of the systems that require network model information.
Summary
The information and interfaces outlined in this paper assume all systems mentioned are available at the particular utility. Obviously many variations to what is suggested above will occur based on the availability and capabilities of the solutions each utility has to work with.
Regardless of the particular set of tools the utility has to work with, the process of interfacing between automated solutions should be approached form the perspective of shortening the business processes. Minimizing the required interaction and understanding of the workforce in the details of the corporate data requirements, while capturing the information on accounting, job status, material requirements, and even network connectivity as transparently as possible will save time and operating costs. In doing so, the WMS, GIS, and ERP solutions can be tools that are truly useful to the utility, without becoming intrusive and even cumbersome for the workforce that is typically dealing with improving efficiency, and reductions in resources.
Properly designed and developed interfaces between the corporate IT solutions can truly be a key factor in the overall success of the utility company living with the pressures in today’s economy.