GISdevelopment.net ---> GITA 2003 ---> System Integration

Meeting business goals: Adaptation of enterprise geospatial technology and upgrade justification

Terry L. Smith
Manager Resource Management Project
MidAmerican Energy Company
1630 Lower Muscatine Road
Iowa City, Iowa 52240
Telephone: (319) 341-4466, Fax: (319) 341-4490
Email: tlsmith@midamerican.com

John W. Hardin
Technical Manager
Intergraph Utilities & Communications
241 Disk Drive
Madison, Alabama 35758
Telephone: (256) 730-8457, Fax: (256) 730-8109
Email: jwhardin@ingr.com

Steve W. Williams
Executive Account Manager
Logica, 11 Blakeridge Place
Mt. Zion, Illinois 62549
Telephone: (217) 864-6054, Fax: (217) 864-2635
Email: williamsst@logica.com


Abstract
The Delivery Services Project at MidAmerican Energy Company (MidAmerican) provides a case study for examining the business drivers that define technology upgrades to enterprise systems. MidAmerican’s legacy enterprise delivery services system consisted of an extensive inhouse work management system, a custom GIS system, and a custom dispatch system. By embracing a new solution that integrates the next generation of software applications, MidAmerican has established work processes that will improve safety, increase productivity, enhance customer service, establish management tools, and eliminate proprietary software. The new delivery services applications implemented at MidAmerican have improved each of the components of its enterprise system; but the greatest benefits will come from tighter integration between these components and having a more process driven solution. MidAmerican's tightly integrated solution enables comprehensive constraint based scheduling, mobile computing, and a reporting environment for the entire enterprise.

Company background
MidAmerican Energy Company (MidAmerican) is the largest utility in Iowa and is strategically located in the middle of several major markets in the Midwest. MidAmerican provides service to more than 673,000 electric customers and 652,000 natural gas customers in a 10,600 square-mile area from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois. The largest communities served by MidAmerican are Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Sioux City, Waterloo, Iowa City and Council Bluffs, Iowa; the Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois; and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

MidAmerican meets the needs of its electric customers with more than 4,400 megawatts of generating capability: 76 percent fueled by coal, 23 percent by nuclear and 1 percent by natural gas and oil. Production costs at its coal-fired generation stations are lower than regional and national averages. The company has majority ownership in four of the five jointly owned coalfired generating stations in Iowa.


Figure 1 – MidAmerican’s Service Territory

Process for change
In January 2000, MidAmerican began the process of dramatically changing its inefficient work processes by adapting and implementing geospatial technology integrated with work management. This process started with the rollout of MidAmerican's company-wide Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) Program, a multi-million dollar project designed to deliver a comprehensive overhaul of the company's work, resource and asset management information systems. The phase-in of the ERM applications that began in 2000 is slated for completion during the first quarter of 2003.

ERM has touched virtually all of MidAmerican’s generation and distribution employees on a regular basis. The project will enhance customer service and reduce operating costs by upgrading and/or replacing some systems while integrating new systems with other information systems previously in use throughout the company.

This paper will focus on one aspect of the ERM Program, which is the Delivery Services Project. The Delivery Services Project consists of an integrated solution that includes:
  • GIS/Facilities Management
  • Work Management
  • Advanced Scheduling
  • Mobile Dispatch
  • Web Enablement
  • Work Reporting DataMart
Reasons for change
Prior to the implementation of the Delivery Services Project, work, resource and asset management were managed without a true work management application. The use of separate, stand alone systems that were tasked with work management capabilities meant that data, paper workflows and associated labor were duplicated throughout the MidAmerican work process. This duplication and the lack of integration between enterprise systems, especially regarding the GIS, severely limited the ability for the Delivery Services organization to reach increased operational efficiency targets, improve safety performance or maintain environmental compliance.

The major problem areas that required change were:
  • Lack of a comprehensive Scheduling System
  • Lack of an integrated GIS System
  • Lack of interfaces to external systems
  • Lack of a comprehensive Reporting Tool
MidAmerican identified three options that could be implemented to address the internal weaknesses of its then-current enterprise system environment.

(1) MidAmerican could retain the current systems and processes with their limited integration and accept that the company would not be able to achieve the operational efficiencies they desired.

(2) The company could undertake process re-engineering around the existing systems and implement some modifications while recognizing that the company was putting a temporary bandage on an inefficient and ineffective work process.

(3) The company could implement a Best-of-Breed, Commercial-Off-the-Shelf solution that would address the existing problem areas while creating a path for the future with commercially supported solution components.

After considering the benefits and costs of the three options, MidAmerican decided to implement a Best-of-Breed, Commercial-Off-the-Shelf solution. This option required a significant financial investment; also it was subject to a tight project timeline and a significant change management effort so the company could start achieving the desired operational results and solution payback in a timely manner.

New solution components
While some of the functionality MidAmerican needed for the Delivery Services Project was available in its legacy GIS, dispatch and work management systems, achieving the company's goals involved incorporating new workflow processes and new applications into the delivery organization. The following table shows the new solution components and the legacy systems that were replaced.


MidAmerican chose to act as prime contractor and overall systems integrator for the implementation of the Delivery Services Project solution. The company contracted with Intergraph and Logica to supply their products and their implementation services for those products.

With MidAmerican acting as systems integrator, another component was added to the solution, that of implementing an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) architecture. This component involved installing, configuring and implementing IBM’s MQ and MQSI products in addition to Oracle’s AQ. This EAI component will facilitate the overall integration of new and legacy delivery applications and will help MidAmerican achieve many of its desired benefits. Further, the EAI component will be used to integrate the new solution with other enterprise applications: CIS, Outage, Financials, Materials and Payroll.


Figure 2 – MidAmerican’s Integrated Business Process Flow

Tightly integrated solution
To achieve enterprise-wide benefits, MidAmerican realized that a tight integration among their new and existing system components was required to achieve productivity goals and reduce redundant processes and data.

MidAmerican felt that the best way for the company to achieve a tightly integrated solution was if they were responsible for integration as the overall systems integrator. Implementing a Best- of-Breed, Commercial-Off-the-Shelf solution usually requires a significant integration effort because of the time required to define the interface and data requirements between all of the individual components. For this solution, the process was made easier for MidAmerican because their new applications were supplied by just two vendors. In addition, Intergraph and Logica provided their components of the solution pre-integrated. This allowed MidAmerican to focus most of their integration effort on defining the requirements of integrating the solution with its other enterprise systems.

Upgrade justification
MidAmerican performed a very detailed study of their existing processes and systems to evaluate how the different options for a new solution would enable them to achieve the overall benefits they wanted. This study identified many opportunities for process and application enhancements.

Each of the opportunities was carefully evaluated, verifying the anticipated benefits against the perceived costs. Following is a list of solution components and the advantages to be gained from each that MidAmerican identified in justifying the upgrade and/or replacement of their legacy systems.
  • GIS System – Upgraded vendor product
    • Enable local creation of specialty maps
    • Net training improvement due to instant selections and validations
    • Leverage standard IT skills rather than specialized GIS skills
    • Configuration rather than customization
    • Less time spent creating, updating and analyzing GIS data
  • Work Management System – Replaced home-grown solution
    • One system with all the work requests facilitates faster and better planning, scheduling and reporting
    • Configuration rather then customization
    • Web enablement to allow access to the data by external parties
    • Resource consolidation of all crews and all equipment
  • Dispatch – Replaced vendor product
    • Extend mobile functionality to more field personnel
    • Dispatch more than just service related work
  • Integrated Work Management/GIS Benefits
    • Eliminate back-end mapping, draw the job once resulting in FTE reductions
    • Eliminate mapping delays
      • "Better locate markings due to currency of maps
      • "Reduction in damages due to currency of maps
      • "Less damages results in less overtime charges and contractor use
      • "Safety improvement and better outage restoration
  • Integrated Work Management/Dispatch Benefits
    • Enabled comprehensive scheduling using all work, resources, priorities and commitments
    • Enable geographic awareness when scheduling by creating pre-optimized routes
  • Integrated Work Management/GIS/Dispatch Benefits
    • Minimize redundant data entry
      • "Order initiation
      • "Order completion
      • "Automated requests for locates, compliance, etc.
      • "Customer capabilities using web-enablement
    • Best Practice
      • "Accurate comprehensive reporting
      • "Performance measurements
      • "Improvements will be achieved through measurement and tracking
  • Integrated Delivery Solution with Enterprise
    • Financials – accurate and timely data
      • "Accounting rules driven by configured rules rather than manual input
      • "Establish and update financial information based on status of work request
    • Materials – inventory levels and last minute ordering
      • "Standardized designs will result in standardized materials
      • "Better material planning by knowing what jobs are coming and when
    • Customer System – better customer service
      • "Customer inquiries are easily answered by sharing data
      • "Meet customer commitments with better scheduling process
Going forward
MidAmerican expects the work management, facilities management and dispatch management pieces of the Delivery Services Project to result in annual savings in all areas. The project started realizing benefits in early 2001 with the implementation of the work management component; and those benefits were increased as the GIS and dispatch components were put into production. After the complete implementation of the entire solution in the first quarter of 2003, MidAmerican expects a payback to occur within 5 years, with the overall savings and benefits coming in the following areas:
  • Improved data and information management
  • Geo-spatial mapping and analysis
  • Work and resource management automation
  • Improved customer service
  • Streamlined business process
  • Reduced operational costs
© GISdevelopment.net. All rights reserved.