All business processes rely on the availability of good data to operate smoothly. When errors appear in data, a normal business process is sidetracked, requiring the enterprise to consume more resources. Each individual instance appears small, but when annualized, the costs can be quite high. One example is a small utility that had about 15% of the services incorrectly positioned or not recorded within their GIS. The impact on just one Outage Management process results in an annual cost of around $100,000. WayToResolve is intended to detect the errors, provide potential resolutions, and provide information to analyze the source of errors. Once the source and volume are determined, the particular processes can be modified to eliminate the source of the error.
Healthcare for Your Information Source
Sources of Defects
The existence of defects can be tracked to a few processes. The largest number likely came from conversion from paper and subsequent migrations to alternate GIS implementations. Original conversions from paper occurred mainly in Computer Aided Drafting systems. Geometries were subsequently migrated to more intelligent systems, along with the capture of attribution. Defects may have existed in the original paper sources. The manual processes of conversion may have introduced some additional errors, particularly connectivity issues. These errors and others were maintained or introduced by subsequent migration processes.
Finally, and the reason for an on-going health check, is that operational processes introduce defects on an ongoing basis.
Detection and Resolution
WayToResolve consists of a processing core, a “Rules” file, and support for externally defined libraries for custom and client-specific detection. There is also a facility provided to create and modify rules in the XML Rules file, and a dashboard to review Quality Statistics. In the case of G/Technologies based models, a custom command within a G/Designer or a G/Administrator seat guides the user through the resolution of each issue. For issues where the count is relatively low, the queued edit mechanism is an effective technique. For higher volume issues, the queued edit function acts as an analysis capability to define an automated process to resolve the issues.
Functions
The WayToResolve Dashboard allows an administrator to review the number of outstanding issues from any complete run of the individual issues. It allows a drill down capability to see what issues exist in feeders, or the top 25 feeders with a specific issue. It also allows changes to be viewed. Thus if there is an increase in issues of a particular type, an analyst would easily see a trend and determine a process that requires review or rework.
Error Examples
There are a number of issues that could be implemented with a minimal effort, as a template would exist for the following issues: These issues can be detected across the entire network, or filtered and executed on subsets (e.g. by Transmission/Distribution/etc., circuit number, service area). The defects are stored in the database, and using the WayToResolve Custom command in a G/Designer seat, the user is able to visit each issue. Facilities are available to in the analysis of the defect and tools to ease the remediation. Some issues definitions permit the user to review the suggested solution based on a pattern, then accept or reject the suggestion. All resolutions are performed with the context of a “job”. Thus the changes are not permanently made to the model until they are posted. Posting can be done with or without validation.
De-energized Features
The introduction of connectivity issues bring about a situation where a feature or group of features are not fed by any breaker in the system.
Incorrect Tie Points
Verify all switchable devices for closed connections to multiple circuits.
Incorrect Circuit IDs
Identify features where the circuit id does not match the breaker it is connected to.
Incorrect/Missing Ownership
Identify features where features have no ownership relationships or are owned by features that are not valid “parents”.
Improper Connections
Identify all features that are connected that should not be.
Invalid Connections between OH & UG
Identify Connections between Overhead and Underground that are NOT through valid features. E.g. OH Conductor to UG Conductor.
Circuit Orientation
This would be a set of rules to check the Underground and Overhead systems to confirm that they are appropriately set.
Incorrect Tap Orientation
Identify locations where a protective device is incorrectly located in-line on the main line instead of protecting the tap line.
Invalid Loops
Identify features fed from multiple sources. These could be features fed from multiple breakers or multiple paths to a feature
Invalid Phase Values
Verify that all conductor phase connections are valid.
Invalid Attribute Combinations
Features may have attribution which is conflicting.
Summary
WayToResolve is intended to standardize the process of detecting defects in a data source. By implementing this product and methodology, an enterprise should have the ability not only to rectify the issues economically, but also implement a strategy for process improvement. When certain defects are increasing, the culprit could be a flaw in a placement/edit function or a lack of understanding of the function. A change could be requested in the placement function (technical resolution), or staff could be retrained (operational resolution). If defects crop up in one district and not another, then it automatically points to re-training just to the district where problems are on the increase.
The product and methodology is particularly well suited to integration projects. The holy grail has always been an “enter once, use frequently” approach to data management. However, when updates are widely distributed, defects can increase. Centralizing updates has been the control mechanism, however, central updates usually negate the business benefits of update at source.
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