In almost every industry, using key performance indicators (KPIs) as benchmarks is a well-known approach for driving operational excellence and continuous improvement. But, developing KPIs requires a lot of experience and a massive amount of data from a wide swath of sources.
Now that TaKaDu Central Event Management (CEM) has been constantly monitoring utilities around the world for several years, we have amassed the necessary extensive data-based insight and experience for benchmarking utilities’ performances. As part of our work with customers, we regularly review their performance data against industry-wide benchmarks, helping them identify areas where they can potentially improve their network management
Some of the KPIs by which utilities can assess their event management performance are:
- Water Savings – The amount of water saved from all leak events detected by TaKaDu CEM and confirmed by the utility. High Water Savings typically correlate to higher scores in the other KPIs.
- Water Loss – Water Loss, closely related to Water Savings, measures the water loss from all the events that CEM detects and are confirmed as leaks by users. Interestingly, a high amount of Water Loss is usually an indication of missing or low-quality data.
- Data Quality and Availability Scores – These are two very strong indicators of how well utilities are monitoring asset failures. The higher the scores, the better. In areas of the network where the data arrives infrequently and with inadequate quality, utilities have limited capabilities to monitor these areas and detect asset failures such as leaks.
- Data Quality Trend – TaKaDu CEM gives utilities insights into issues that need to be fixed, enabling continuous improvement. In most cases, utilities significantly improve their data quality score over the first few years of using CEM. A Data Quality Trend that is not strongly improving or is unusually volatile suggests that the utility is not optimally maintaining its network.
- Response Time to Leaks General and Hidden – These KPIs show the average time lag between when TaKaDu CEM issues an alert that it detected a general or hidden leak, and the time when the event is marked in the system as fixed. Faster response times equate to reduced water loss. Over time, most utilities show significant improvement in both KPIs, indicating they have adopted methodologies and processes that improve and speed their decision-making.
- Response Time to Telemetry Faulty and Faulty Meters – How fast telemetry and meters issues are fixed has a direct impact on the quality and availability of data, which in turn impact the response time to leaks.
- Real Events Detection – This KPI shows the percentage of TaKaDu events alerts that are real (i.e., not false-positives that may be caused by higher consumption). High Data Availability and at least average Data Quality rates are essential to a high Real Events Detection rate.
The value of KPIs
For all those KPIs, and others, TaKaDu has developed industry benchmarks that allow utilities to compare their own performance to industry leaders. This helps them identify areas where their performance is weaker and enables them to set measurable goals for improvement.
We recently published an article that explains these KPIs in more detail, with real-world examples. In the article, we share our insights regarding the industry benchmarks that utilities should be aiming for.
