Electronic Management of Gas Meters in Serbia

Background
DP Novi Sad Gas is the biggest natural gas supplier in Serbia. It distributes natural gas to local residents through the network of gas station and gas distribution center it has built. The company has successfully performed internal gas installations, projected gas pipeline systems and sold gas equipment and gas appliances. Meter-reading, equipment maintenance and network management was a heavy workload, and traditional manual operations were inefficient and error-prone.
 
Challenges

• Users of natural gas are distributed widely in Serbia, so entering each resident's house to conduct meter reading is of low efficiency.

• What's more, mistakes are easily committed by handwriting, and it's demanding to recognize those handwritten records.

• Staff need to input figures one by one on a fixed PC terminal when uploading data, which not only wastes a lot of time but causes many errors.

• The maintenance center can't be informed of the problems founded immediately during inspection.

 
Solutions
Those challenges are successfully overcame by deploying customized C2000 mobile computers. Chainway PDA integrated needed functions modules--barcode scanning, RFID, Wi-Fi and camera to realize automatic gas meter reading; also all collected data can be transmitted in real time to the backend system.During on-site inspections, the exact problem can be figured out soon and maintenance be made in time, because the staff can not only record information and send real-time feedback to the management system, but also obtain the visual image information by camera.
 
Effects

• It realizes automatic meter reading, which saved labor costs and improved productivity.

• Paperless records are achieved. Portable PDA brings convenience to the inspectors.

• With camera on the PDA, inspectors can take photos to provide more visible details in their inspection reports, thus equipment failures can be seen more directly.

• It reduces losses caused by equipment or network breakdown, since the maintenance process is simplified.

• All data and information can be conveniently inquired and managed at any time in the backend system.

 
PDA Configuration
P/N: C2000
Functions: 1D, HF RFID, Camera