DevonWay Adds ActionWay(TM) to its On-Demand Web-Service Offering for Nuclear Plant Operations.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Devon Way LLC 

--DevonWay web-service applications manage plant configuration and the life-cycle of corporate assets. ActionWay supports the latest U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's requirements to single out those activities or conditions that are adverse to quality or safety. As observations and incidents are logged, ActionWay recognizes and appropriately escalates items using dynamically rendered priority routes to responsible individuals. The result is effortless regulatory compliance as a bi-product of business process improvement to plant operations.

The Devon Way LLC, today released ActionWay(TM) as a new business service in its WorkWay(TM) suite of on-demand plant solutions designed to serve America's nuclear fleet with next generation web-based software tools. ActionWay uses simple browser-based processes to capture employee observations of plant conditions, and then routes the information through appropriate approved paths for action. The new collaborative web service delivers improvement in core business processes while delivering regulatory compliance incorporating directives from the NRC Inspection Manual -- Part 9900. Like all DevonWay web-services, ActionWay is available by monthly subscription thru DevonWay On-Demand, or behind the customer's firewall as DevonWay On-Site.

Most nuclear facilities use a system for recording observation and conditions with each entry generating a Condition Report. Because of this, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has had no real way to measure or trend conditions of interest for the U.S. nuclear fleet. Today, web-based ActionWay enables observations to be initiated from any browser, and only conditions that are adverse to quality or safety, the ones of interest to the NRC, become Condition Reports. All others are reviewed and routed for consideration to interested plant departments.

Remarking about the importance firms place on ease of use, Robert W. Felton, Chairman and CEO, and a nuclear engineer said, "Daily input of changing conditions on the plant floor is essential to providing managers and review committees with the knowledge they need to make good decisions. Allowing anyone to submit an incident helps invite users to record findings, users can even remain anonymous or offer to become part of the solution. But how to get employees to actually use a system? At DevonWay, we believe the answer is to make it as easy to use as Yahoo! Designed with the 'casual user' in mind, if employees know how to use an eMail system or popular web-sites, they already have the training needed to use ActionWay. And the only thing easier than using ActionWay is deploying ActionWay: Just sit down ... log on ... and start using ActionWay. No additional software required," Mr. Felton said.

Determining the path and destination of each incident recorded is the job of ActionWay's powerful workflow engine. Time and motion of each incident's due-date concerns escalate according to plant rules and oversight mandates. Using respondent profiles, ActionWay ensures things don't fall between the cracks when someone is absent. Workflow builds an electronic inbox of items requiring an individual's involvement to avoid wasted time on items not requiring personal/team involvement.

Simplification of business process is achieved by ensuring that the right information is available to the right audience at the right time. To achieve this goal, ActionWay employs powerful profile-driven publish and subscribe security taxonomies in a workflow context. Data moves through configurable Review and Approval paths. As responsible individuals or groups change along the path, privileges to view or update is granted for each based on the user's role. Complete audit reporting exists to ensure that no ActionWay item goes unnoticed.

To assist management, graphical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help point to bottlenecks in the backlog and information flow. Single-click requests provide drill-down to individual workflows, allowing tasks to be quickly reassigned to alleviate the bottleneck.

Because ActionWay is available to a broad plant population and designed to capture any topic from any employee, data sifting, refinement and routing is important. Mr. Felton continued, "By including Google as a powerful contextual search engine across the database, existing themes and patterns in plant data can be easily found. And since many ActionWay items that are submitted for awareness may have no impact on plant safety, they may be useful in suggesting improvements in training programs or be stored as themes and input for future departmental use."

Items logged, reviewed and escalated to Condition Report status requiring work to be performed in accordance with controlled quality-related work, can be seamlessly handed-off to WorkWay web-services or the work order system of record. "WorkWay is our flagship web-product designed to raise the work request, plan/schedule and perform a quality repair using nuclear best practices along the way. WorkWay is also designed to front-end that old clunker of a work management system of record you'd like to replace but don't know how. There is an easy way ... and it's The Devon Way," Mr. Felton said.

About DevonWay

DevonWay(TM) supplies next generation enterprise class business solutions as an on-demand service to customers in the energy industry. In addition, the firm's experienced staff employs a rapid development service-oriented architecture and methodology to help utilities redefine business processes and improve business agility. With extensive knowledge of nuclear plant operation, DevonWay is helping the nuclear industry create its next generation of solutions for use by the US fleet, as well as plants in Japan, the UK and Europe. DevonWay is headquartered in San Francisco, California with solution centers in Portland, Oregon and represented around the world through partnership. For more information please visit http://www.devonway.com.

DevonWay, WorkWay, EngineeringWay, PartsWay, & ActionWay are registered trademarks; Speedway and M5 are registered service marks of The Devon Way, LLC. (C) 2006 All Rights Reserved.