Utilities across the board strive to maximize worker productivity and reduce costs. Streamlining workforce management processes is one solution that can significant improve the efficiency of a utility's workforce.

“In talking to utilities across the world, we see the same opportunities in the labor force,” says Ken Zagzebski, industry solutions executive for T&D Utilities, Ventyx (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., www.ventyx.com). “For convenience sake, work and people have been sectioned by specific organizations [within the utilities], but to gain visibility across the spectrum, utilities need to optimize the whole instead of the parts.

“There is tremendous opportunity to become more efficient, but some of the departmental turf issues have to be addressed,” says Zagzebski. “We need to do a better job and have materials at job site ready and we need a job-site management system that will enable our field workers to be more efficient.”

Ventyx recently unveiled Service Suite 8.0, its first release of Service Suite following the combination of Indus and MDSI earlier this year.

Service Suite 8.0 leverages MDSI's Advantex enterprise workforce management platform, providing a true enterprisewide workforce management solution that manages all types of field work including service, maintenance, inspection, repair, trouble/outage and construction.

“In the last six months, we've been starting to hear utilities talk about resource optimization through scheduling tools,” says Zagzebski. “The industry wants scheduling tools that integrate with asset and work management systems to optimize productivity.”

The solution: “Enterprise work force management,” interjects Steve Radice, industry solutions executive for T&D Utilities, Ventyx. “In past 5 to 10 years, mobile data has focused on outage/customer service work. We're looking at it now from a distribution perspective, taking into account the size of outage and the impact on customer service. Utilities are beginning to see the need for a single tool to manage all aspects of work and the flexibility to look at work from a unified standpoint.”

The Service Suite 8.0 release provides key enhancements to scheduling and dispatch tools, broader mobile support and enhanced business intelligence. Key new features include:

• The Gantt chart feature enables dispatch users to see a graphical overview of shifts worked by mobile users and the orders assigned to those shifts. With a color-coded display of states and alerts and “hover” menus for more detail, the solution gives dispatch users a real-time view of current day orders and activities in the field and can trigger local optimization of workflows in the field as work orders are completed. As a result, the solution helps ensure efficient and timely assignment of work orders to appropriate technicians, optimizing schedules and minimizing unnecessary travel costs.

• Long-duration orders can be assigned on the Gantt chart manually, or the system can automatically assign the orders over one or two consecutive shifts.

• Java phones/PDAs and mobile Web services enable personnel with minimal order data and completion requirements, such as contractors and light users, to benefit by communicating with Service Suite via the Mobile Web services feature.

• Real-time data warehouse and operations dashboard offers easy access to real-time data to track and manage critical business operations.

“At utilities, the outage management system interfaces with Service Suite 8.0. When a trouble order comes in from the system, Advantex assigns and dispatches a specific tech or crew,” says Zagzebski. “ABB is our preferred partner, but we deal with all outage management system providers.”

Zagzebski says that Southern Company (Atlanta) is a big user of Advantex and is now installing Service Suite 8.0 across all of its operating companies.