CAIDI continued from 62 the contribution to overall CAIDI from each day over the previous three years led to an extraordinary discovery: 345 days every year, the daily CAIDI number was excellent. But each year there were about 20 days that, taken together, drove CAIDI up by 20 percent. This was the clue the team was looking for.
Setting the goal
Once the team understood that its systems and processes worked 95 percent of the time, the challenge changed from how to fix specific problems to “how to change our systems and processes so that we can always be in control.” Looking more closely at the CAIDI Top 20, the team found that on each of these days, the state experienced a mid-sized storm, with outages at 60 to 75 locations. From their own experiences, team members knew what it was like at the Systems Operation Center (SOC) during those days: the radios get noisy, alarms are going off, decision-making becomes more difficult and dispatchers may be sending crews to the nearest outage location, not necessarily the one most important for CAIDI performance. Meanwhile, in the midst of the action, some crews are “standing-by” waiting to be dispatched.
Based on this analysis, the team decided to minimize the impact of any one day on the overall CAIDI number. Because CAIDI is a cumulative measure, early in the year it can go through large fluctuations, but by mid-year any single day has minimal impact
The insight that improvement had to be “event-driven”
rather than “cause-driven” set the utility on a path to dis-
cover the critical elements of effective outage response.
on the total. In order to evaluate each day’s performance on an equal basis, the team developed a baseline database of CAIDI performance and set a goal: During the month of September 2007, no single day will contribute more than one additional minute to the total CAIDI number.
Managing the whole picture
With the goal set, the team was able to rethink where improvement was needed and get to work on the key aspects of outage coordination.
Early recognition of the escalating events. The team developed a web page, fed by data already available in the outage management system, to provide a global view and real-time tracking of the current day’s outage events. Initially used to track progress against the team’s goal, the web page soon became a powerful tool for tracking outage response. Updated every 15 minutes, the page displays details of each event—how many customers are affected, event duration, whether a crew has been dispatched, and projected restoration time. At the
top of the page, the day’s total contribution to CAIDI is continuously updated. With this snapshot available, the SOC coordinators had a clear view of the emerging picture of outage activity as a basis for deciding how to respond.
Effective communications. The outage management process already included protocols for communicating up the chain of command as conditions escalated and resource decisions needed to be made, but often the calls were not made. “We’ve got it,” supervisors would explain, driven by a sense of pride and personal responsibility, as the customer minutes mounted up and irretrievable damage was done to the CAIDI number. The team decided that it would get consistent communications only by building the call for help into the process. The team instituted a set of automated alerts through the paging system that triggered conference calls with the appropriate level of management as the size of outages increased and events became more widespread.
Better up-front decision-making. Early decision-making about whether to mobilize resources is critical to quick resolution of outages. With the data in front of them and the communications process in place, outage coordinators were in a better position to make the tough decisions: Should we bring in additional crews and supervisors? Should we have tree crews on stand-by? Should we decentralize dispatching to the local area work centers? These are all tough decisions with resource and financial implications. Once a crew works an extended workday, it isn’t available for work the following day and schedules are disrupted. When making decisions in isolation, supervisors tended to hesitate, not wanting to do the wrong thing and hoping the situation would stay under control. With the right people on the early conference call, better decisions could be made.
Better coordination of field work. Outage minutes grow when a crew is dispatched to a site but, when it arrives, finds that it can’t do the work. To improve reconnaissance and problem diagnosis ahead of the arrival of a crew, field supervisors were given wireless cards for their computers. This allows them to see what the dispatcher is seeing and get ahead of events. With work underway at one site, the supervisor can move to the next site and do an early assessment. Is there a minor issue that can be quickly eliminated? Do we need a pole, a transformer and a three-man crew? Do we need to send a tree crew first? In a mid-sized storm, it’s essential to work events in parallel and get the right materials and people on site so the crews can be fully productive.
Using CAIDI as a leading indicator.
The CAIDI measure had been a lagging indicator, used to discuss monthly performance, disconnected from immediate outage experience. The work of the CAIDI team has turned the measure into a leading indicator that can be reviewed during a daily conference call. This has accelerated learning about how outages are being managed. The result? The cumulative 2007 CAIDI number was driven down in the last quarter of the year, an achievement that previously had seemed impossible.
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