Call ,
 Hi Louise,

welcome back! 

I trust everything is OK at home? How are you coping?

My assistant told me that you tried to call me........what's the subject?,  general catch-up?, want to know what Zhiyong wants to see you for, pick up where we left off?

I imagine you must also be VERY busy, so soon after your return to work...so here's a start..............

....where we left off...
Just before you left, I tried to get to see you to discuss the whole consolidation of Gas systems issue. We've been working through something called  Gas Trading Vision 2, which in my mind wasn't really a "vision", but more of a series of "fixes" to the exisitng systems.

I had got some overview flow diagrams completed for all the Gas Systems, and after asking lots of questions about how these systems evolved, started drawing some conclusions about why we appear to be in such a state. Apart from the obvious overlap of our several Gas systems, it occured to me that our huge team size had quite a lot to do with sheer number of technologies employed as well as the the sheer number of moving inter-related parts. For each technology employed, that skill set has to be present in the team supporting it, and most of the time these guys are not mult-skilled, so we end up with lots of individual skill sets that can't be transfered easily.

What I wanted to propose, was a serious, incremental effort, to consolidate the systems and to decommission the old ones as we went along. This would free up resources, and with a smaller technology set make them more responsive and flexible so they could be used to add value.

Note: This is not a Sitara 2, not big bang.... this is an incremental approach....

While you've been gone, we've been getting together to discuss this, (a lot harder than expected!), and have started to make a stab at identifying the component pieces, technology choices, biggest commercial impact etc....and have some pre-liminary direction.

Is this something you would back?.... or am I wasting my time?   (before you write this off completely, I would like the opportunity of talking to you about it

Zhiyong Wei...
He is probably going to ask you where you stand on project initiatives like the one above, as well as ask you what your overall vision is for the Gas Trading systems.

regards

Steve
louise.kitchen@enron.com