“Much of  the time and money spent maintaining the manual is  purely  clerical,  typically  performed  by  one  or  many  of   the engineering staff,” said AURSI Director John Tingue. “Taking this into consideration, based on the average cost of  the engineering staff,  it  becomes  extremely  expensive  to  perform  these  clerical duties in maintaining the manual. With this in mind it is even more expensive for a utility not to maintain their MSM. The MSM is the back bone for the material that the utility uses.” The  information  in  the  manuals  was  so  dynamic  that  the moment an update was made and posted and then mailed to all the end users, additional changes were required which started the process  over  again.  Also,  if   the  utility  went  to  the  cost  to maintain and update their manuals and send out changes, the users receiving the updates often did not implement the up- dates in their individual manuals. “Many cases would arise on the materials and inventory management side of  the operation where a supplier did not have updated MSM information to supply the utility with the right product,” said Tingue. “When this happens, the cost of material can go up by as much as 40 percent in just resolving a materials issue.” The cost of  maintaining the paper-based MSM was not just in keeping the information up to date, but time spent in researching for materials, paper cost, faxing cost, reproduction cost and distribution cost. “For a utility to make a change to their manual, it was very time consuming  and  expensive,”  said  Tingue.  “During  recent  studies AURSI found that utilities vary from not maintaining a manual at all to making many changes a month.” Technology to the Rescue As computers have become the major tool in maintaining data, MSM  information  was  stored  on  a  floppy  disk  and  printed  out when necessary. Even though this advance made portions of  the process more efficient, it did not diminish the task of  distributing the updates and it could typically only be maintained by a limited group of  users. Because the MSM is vital in maintaining efficient  and  standards-based  purchasing  for  the  entire utility, the emergence of  Internet technology provided a new way to bring the supply chain together in a precisely streamlined manner. The  Florida-based  company,  AURSI,  Inc.,  designed an online MSM platform using new Internet and database technology that incorporates all the traditional functions of  the old MSMs with the added functionality and dynam- ics of  a new web-based system.     “The system is using new technology not just to meet the industry needs but to simplify expansion in the future,” said Paul Martin, AURSI’s lead programmer.       In addition to eliminating the problem of  information distribution, the online MSM can be updated and maintained by anyone  cleared  to  do  so.  Employees  at  multiple  locations  that RELAY 12 DECEMBER 2001