More important, says Hunter, the old application was a potential drag on BGE's competitiveness. IDMS, he says, didn't provide a flexible programming environment that BGE could easily change to meet the rapidly changing competitive and regulatory environment. With the company's monopoly status in question, Hunter says he felt BGE needed a new system that was flexible enough to adapt to changing regulations and competition. BGE had a corporate mandate to use IBM's DB2 on the mainframe and Oracle Server wherever else it was possible. Such an automated plant-management system, Hunter believed, would be less costly to run and would provide BGE with maximum efficiency and flexibility.
Users enter work orders, which the system tracks through to completion.
Plant workers now initiate all work orders in the system, which tracks them to completion and even historical archives. Most work done at the plant requires approved procedures, drawings, and other documentation. By checking in the system, plant workers can easilty verify that they are using the proper revisions of this documentation. The NRC also requires that all nuclear-power plants maintain extensive documentation of their operations.