Integrating OMS and mobile enabled WMS: Synergies and challenges
Background
Deregulation in the utilities industry is forcing these companies to work more efficiently in order to
compete more aggressively and effectively in the marketplace. Increased customer satisfaction translates
to increased profitability and market share. Competitive marketplace and customer care concerns have
forced utility companies to increase their expenditures in GIS, OMS, and WMS as these technologies
continue to provide increases in operational efficiency.
A review of these diverse applications follows:
GIS – This discipline has steadily grown from its modest beginning in the 1960s as a mainframe based
tool for land use planning to its current stature because maps are a powerful tool for conveying and
organizing information. They represent the quickest way of conveying spatial information and
relationships non-verbally. GIS gives a virtual map with the additional capabilities of spatial queries
and data edits at the click of a button. In today’s information rich world GIS provides another important
function. GIS can serve as a way of organizing data about physical objects as a function their location
and the location of other related objects. This technology is therefore very useful to any organization
such as a utility that maintains and operates physical infrastructure and the related virtual information.
In their GIS databases utility companies can maintain virtual networks that accurately depict the spatial
Distribution of their customers, distribution circuits, and gas mains or any other physical asset of
interest.
OMS - Typically these systems are seen as applications which utilize the GIS as their backbone.
OMS systems are designed to utilize spatial networks to predict the location and potential scope of a
reported outage. Incoming trouble calls received from a customer care system are utilized by the
OMS in conjunction with the spatial network data supplied by the GIS to infer the extent and
location of an outage. Dispatchers will assign the appropriate personnel who in turn will confirm or
dismiss the prediction when they arrive on the scene.
MWMS - These systems particularly the mobile enabled variety allow organizations to efficiently
manage their workload by optimally matching the work force (crews) to the load (jobs). In order to
do this optimally this systems utilize constraint based algorithms that take into account such factors
as crew and job locations provided by a GIS or GPS, skills and materials needed for the job and
scheduling constraints. More importantly mobile enabled WMS take advantage of mobile computing
equipment and sophisticated wireless communications to maintain constant voice and data links with
the dispatch centers.
Technology
Technological advances pertinent to our topic are those dealing with interoperability and
telecommunications particularly in wireless networking and mobile computing. New software
development and applications integration technology are also important. The following summarizes the
more noteworthy ones.
Mobility
A recent white paper by IDC has identified the mobile worker, the proliferation of distributed web
based apps, and the usage of intelligent wireless mobile computing devices as ‘the third paradigm of
computer usage’ (IDC 1998). The explosive growth of mobile computing has truly been phenomenal.
Some estimates for the number of mobile workers worldwide are as high as 108 million by the year
2001. Sales figures for handheld devices in the U.S. are expected to exceed 14.1 million in 1999. This
figure does not include laptop or notebook computers. The phenomenal growth of the Internet and the
World Wide Web is undoubtedly fueling this trend. Equally as provocative has been the rapid rise in
wireless communications, and the accompanying services, i.e., digital and cellular voice and data,
paging, email, fax, and Internet access. (Schultz 1999)
Mobile computing capability in the field has naturally become an integral part of WMS. According to
the FFA Magazine, by the end of 2001, 33 percent of large and medium corporations will be
implementing Mobile Workforce Management applications and providing field/sales personnel with
wireless communications device to stay competitive. (MDSI 2001)
