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RSSMobile Technology For Managing Meter Replacement Initiatives
December 3, 2008
•White Paper: Mobile Technology For Managing Meter Replacement Initiatives
By Christine Easterfield, Cambashi
Technology is changing the meter replacement process. The software and hardware options for field crews, the wireless communication systems available to exchange data with office systems and the supporting office systems are available at differing levels of sophistication. Every task, and especially the data capture and back office system updates discussed earlier, can benefit from this technology.
An early opportunity for improved efficiency is found in inventory management. For example, 'work order to crew' and 'crew takes meters' can be an error-prone source of cost and delay (wrong details on work order, meters not available in yard, half a day lost correcting the situation). Meter replacement projects can involve millions of meters, whether they are regular maintenance programs or related to large-scale Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) projects. Control of that stock and efficient dispatch of meters to the right place at the right time is essential. Two complementary technologies can be brought into play here. Until the meters are ready to be distributed to the field crews they are likely to be managed in pallet loads, which themselves need to be identified, with either barcodes or radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. These technologies can also be used to label the meters themselves to enable individual unit tracking. The opportunity exists to eliminate errors such as those mentioned above and expect to find the right meters in the depot, reliable work orders, and correct meters pre-loaded on pallets or into trucks each morning.
Click Here To Download:•White Paper: Mobile Technology For Managing Meter Replacement Initiatives
