Stephen G. Lee
Brian Welander
Routing Meter Readers… Leveraging an investment in data conversion!
Project Update 1998-1999
This document provides an update to the Seattle Public Utilities Meter Reader Rerouting Project since the presentation of the paper titled: "Routing Meter Readers... Leveraging an investment in data conversion" at the 1998 Esri User Conference in San Diego, California.
Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) completed rerouting bi-monthly accounts in the northern portion of the City of Seattle in mid-June, 1998. The rerouting of monthly accounts was completed by mid-September, 1998. New routes created with the aid of RouteSmartTM modeling software were posted to the customer billing system within two weeks of route creation. The new routes were implemented into the production ITRON Automated Metering System at about the same time customer notifications mailings were sent to those accounts impacted by a billing cycle change.
During late-Summer of 1998, data was prepared for modeling the southern portion of the City.
As the meter readers read the meters on the newly created routes, a level of concern over the travel paths was raised by the readers that warranted the suspension of rerouting the southern half of the City. Compounding the problem of implementing route changes was a high level of meter reader turnover during this period of time. Reasons for the turnover included injuries, non-performance, as well as disagreement by some meter readers over the increased number of meters assigned to routes. New meter readers were unfamiliar with the geographical area of some routes as well as not experienced with the location of meter boxes. On the other hand, new meter readers not accustom to routes prior to software generated routes did not have travel path concerns that some of the senior meter readers have registered.
During October 1998, SPU and RouteSmart Technologies, Inc. began discussions on the development of a Travel Path Editor for meter reading. This tool allows for the tailoring of the travel sequence in which individual meters are read. Therefore, meter reader preferences (i.e., read order) can be incorporated to overrule the initial travel path solutions generated by the software.
A series of interviews were conducted between January and March 1999 in order for the rerouting team to collect specific meter reader concerns. As the interviews were conducted, it became evident that there was a lack of project and route ownership by the meter readers and meaningful feedback was lacking. The interviews broke down and no specific conclusion was reached.
Currently, an independent assessment of the rerouting process is being performed by SPU to 1) identify and evaluate concerns presented by the meter reading staff, 2) assess the overall success of the rerouting effort to date, and 3) propose an action plan to continue through completion of the rerouting project. Some of the preliminary findings and recommended solutions are:
Issues/Findings:
- user requirements (i.e., meter reader needs) were not documented early in the project
- a lack of formal quality assurance procedures made it more difficult to measure the acceptance of routes
- uphill/downhill location of meters in relationship to their service address is a larger problem than anticipated
- need a way to incorporate meter reader preferences into the routes (e.g., travel paths that loop back to a parked vehicle)
- a few meter readers prefer a North/South and East/West orientation of travel paths instead of the looping travel paths that are characteristic of the RouteSmartTM (Euler Circuits)
- the number of meters contained within software generated routes are within meter reader guidelines
- manual procedures (e.g., resequencing) to correct and/or supplement the software generated routes were not consistently applied by the meter readers
- inconsistent assignment and/or scheduling of routes to meter readers exposed the project to several meter reader learning curves (whereas, a new route should have been assigned to one meter reader and refined over successive months before releasing the route to other meter readers)
Solution
- re-introduce the rerouting project to all participants and document expectations, responsibilities, and route requirements
- implement route string teams
- formalize quality assurance procedures which include previewing routes before implementing them to production
- add staff to the project
- perform a GPS field survey to improve the location of problem meter boxes
- use a tool like the Travel Path Editor to incorporate meter reader preferences
- improve monitoring and enforcement of prescribed procedures
SPU recognizes the significant cost-savings that can be gained by balancing inequities in the workload allocation among metering routes. The utility needs to focus more energy on change management issues in order to move the project forward. Lessons learned during the past year include:
- Project roles and responsibilities need ownership from all stakeholders
- Technology is only part of the solution to a successful rerouting project
- Time and energy spent on developing the "ideal" dataset must be balanced with manual procedures implemented in the field
Authors
Stephen G. Lee
Senior Systems Analyst
Seattle Public Utilities
Dexter Horton Building, 9th Floor
710 Second Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104
Telephone: (206) 684-7558
Fax: (206) 684-0808
E-mail: stephen.lee@ci.seattle.wa.us
Brian Welander
Senior Meter Reader/Systems Analyst
Seattle Public Utilities
Dexter Horton Building, 6th Floor
710 Second Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104
Telephone: (206) 684-8074
Fax: (206) 386-1310
E-mail: brian.welander@ci.seattle.wa.us