Case Studies: Southern Company

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“Southern Company serves nearly 4 million customers in one of the fastest growing regions in the United States. With more than 30,000 megawatts of generating capacity and a rapidly growing wholesale energy business, Southern Company is a major source of energy in the Southeastern United States.”

The Atlanta, GA based company has had nearly 100 years of experience in providing their customers with reliable high quality service. The conglomerate is comprised of five operating utilities, as well as a wholesale generation business.

The Problem

Southern Company was faced with a logistical problem that has become quite familiar in the energy industry: maintaining NRC required documents in an efficient and effective manner. With millions of images that are required to be kept on file for the life of the plant plus an additional 100 years, storage space becomes precious and organizational challenges become complicated.

The Solution

NAC International teamed with F.Y.I Image to provide an immediate solution to the logistical problems facing Southern Company. The proposed solution also promised to positively affect the manner in which images are retrieved and maintained in comparison to the current processes being utilized. The F.Y.I technology facilitated the conversion of the Plant Hatch Quality Assurance documents, contained on 3,000 microfilm reels, into multi-page PDF files. Once the microfilm had been transformed into the PDF format, the files were burned onto CDs and indexed by Document ID.

The Benefits

Southern Company realized benefits that reached beyond the resolution of the main storage problem that it was facing. The utilization of the F.Y.I micrographic solution has provided efficiency improvements along with presenting added value to their EDMS investment. The following benefits have been obtained as a result of the completion of this project:

	Improved efficiency and reliability of search and retrieval tasks
	20 years of QA records potentially available online within the Southern Company Intranet
	Facilitation of current and future licensing issues
	Substantial decrease in effort and cost of long term document maintenance