Our Clients and Services: Case Studies

General Motors Corporation

GIS/GPS Support & GIS Strategic Planning

Project Description

General Motors Corporation (GM) Worldwide Facilities Group (WFG) began a program a number of years ago to acquire GPS locations of utility appurtenances at facility sites. These included such systems as water, sanitary, stormwater, electric, gas, steam, etc. Deemed successful, this method of collecting site information was directed to be used at other facilities. Because of the advancement of GIS and GPS technology, and issues with some of the existing custom developed scripting, it was determined that an outside GIS consultant could be of assistance to support the program. There was also a desire to investigate the use of GIS for other WFG systems, specifically the in-facilities databases and applications.

InfoGeographics was contracted by GM and through CFI (one of GM's key facility management consultants), to support and assist the GIS/GPS efforts in production, solve many of the technical issues encountered, while moving to current ESRI supported technology and databases, and to strategically plan for possible, more widespread GIS use.

Project Responsibilities

InfoGeographics has assisted GM WFG in a variety of ways, using a structured methodology to accomplish the project goals. The following are some of these efforts.

GPS Facilities Support
  • IGI has assisted GM staff acquire GPS/GIS devices and software, modernize the databases used into robust geodatabase format, solve scripting issues, train staff on the latest GIS/GPS software, and generally support the acquisition of facilities data at multiple sites.
Facilities Website Support
  • IGI has provided ad hoc development and production support to CFI technical staff to troubleshoot and resolve Internet Mapping Services (IMS) issues with the GM web system they maintain.
GIS Planning
  • InfoGeographics is currently informally investigating and recommending directions and alternatives to make more widespread and effective use of the GIS infrastructure that has been built at GM's Worldwide Facilities Group.