This post is dedicated to our intern Jessica, who taught us all at NextDrop how to optimally design a system.
Problem: Chandru said he can only use our NextDrop system with 10 valve areas, even though he has 40 valve areas.
Understanding the REAL problem: After following him around as he turned on valves/talking to him in depth, we realized that the problem was the 30 minute advance notices. After he explained it to us, it made sense. It’s really hard to calculate the 30 minute advance notice for each valve he opens, because he not only has to keep track of that, he has to keep track of all the valves he has to open (many at a time), and all the valves he has to close (many at a time). Since he does all of this by gauging pressure and guesstimating how long he should keep things on (i.e. it’s an art not a science/schedule), it becomes incredibly difficult to remember everything. Point taken.
Understanding the Logic:
- IF Chandru gets water in the first valve (Lingrajnagar)
- THEN the rest of his valve areas get water sometime that day.
- UNLESS there is a power outage
- OR pipe damage
- Chandru places 1 advance notification call for the first valve (Lingrajnagar)
- This triggers advance notifications to be sent to ALL his valve areas (“It is verified that water is available in your area today”)
- Then, for the rest of the valves, he ONLY has to do a valve open and valve close message.
- The only problem is that the first notification comes at 5am (so we don’t want everyone to get a message at 5 am)
- So: We separate each valve area into 2 categories: Areas that get water before 8am and after 8am (8am is an arbitrary time).
- Everyone who gets water before 8am gets an advance notification message at 5am saying water is available in your area today
- Everyone who gets water after 8am gets an advance notification message at 8am saying water is available in your area today
- Valve open messages go out as they do now, and so do valve close messages
We are working with Swaroop to implement this redesign the beginning of October and see how our customers like it. The reason it gets complicated is because we are now reassigning the way our system groups things. It used to be by valve area only, but now it is by valve man AND time, which gets a little more complicated and messy.
Anyway, we actually think residents will like this system a lot better, because earlier notice is always better notice.
We will be sure to post updates on customer and valvemen response