More and more organizations are managing assets under contracts that provide customers with performance and availability guarantees. As the shift from selling reactive service to selling solutions and outcomes becomes more prevalent, service leaders are increasingly accountable for driving cost productivity AND contract profitability.
ServiceMax Asset 360 delivers visibility into asset data to support intelligent decision-making during maintenance planning. However, one area that is often overlooked by asset-centric organizations is the value of field data in improving maintenance outcomes. Asset 360 provides the mobile framework to track three critical elements of field data: service and maintenance bill of materials (BoM) updates, equipment failure data, and issue resolution data.
Access to this information helps answer questions such as:
- What parts are currently running in my asset?
- How are those parts performing?
- How do I ensure that my engineering organization is kept up to date of equipment failures?
- How do I notify customers of critical maintenance needed on their equipment?
And with this information in hand, organizations can support better cost control, increased contract performance rates, and even drive upsell opportunities.
Can You Trace What Parts Are Running in Your Asset?
The flow of information about the “as maintained” configuration of an asset is critical to driving cost-effective asset management. Organizations generally have a solid process for managing changes to the Bill of Materials of a product before it leaves the factory. But controlling changes to the configuration of the service BoM and keeping maintenance BoMs of installed assets up to date can prove to be more challenging.
An inefficient service BoM update process can lead to incorrect or superseded parts being shipped to site and can even lead to those parts being installed on an asset. Asset 360 allows technicians to record information about incorrect or superseded parts on their mobile device and communicate this information back to the service BoM. These updates ensure accuracy of the service BoM and reduce margin slippage caused by incorrect part shipments that trigger repair delays.
In addition, Asset 360 allows technicians to view the “as maintained” configuration of the asset through their mobile device. Technicians can update serial numbers on tracked components as old parts are uninstalled and new parts are installed, thus ensuring that maintenance BoMs remain current. Maintenance BoMs populated with accurate serialized part numbers improve first-time fix rates by reducing the number of times that technicians need to make return visits when the wrong parts are sent to the site.
What is Your Asset Data Telling You?
Asset 360 allows field technicians to collect structured data on their mobile devices that can be used by the service organization to drive analysis and reporting of failure trends. For example, drilldown trees can be used to troubleshoot assets and communicate failure findings.
Access to equipment failure and downtime data is fundamental to running a profitable service business. Failure data empowers service organizations with the information needed to prioritize and implement corrective actions and quickly analyze the root causes of equipment and parts failures. This data can also reveal trends that lead to better repair vs. replace decisions, minimize product liability issues, and even identify solutions that lead to revenue-generating asset upgrade opportunities.
Just as important to this process is providing technicians the ability to track and communicate the “fix” that ultimately results in returning an asset to operation. Technicians frequently invent and apply innovative solutions and workarounds in the field in order to keep assets operational. When this knowledge is shared with the service organization, it can lead to product design improvements or upgrade packages for existing assets that generate additional revenue and upsell opportunities.
Finally, better access to product failure data can improve an organization’s ability to respond quickly to product issues. For the service organization, this means maintenance costs can be better controlled and predicted by repairing assets before they fail. Asset 360 is a powerful tool for communicating service bulletins, upgrade notifications, and other technical information about assets to field technicians. As the organization’s face to the customer, this allows field technicians to be more proactive in communicating maintenance needs and upgrade opportunities to customers before assets experience critical failures.
Asset 360 is a comprehensive solution that allows service organizations to leverage field data to better manage the life cycle of installed assets. Accurate tracking of serialized parts and regular updates to service and maintenance bill of materials protect profitability on maintenance contracts. Equipment failure and troubleshooting data used to drive analytics and reporting supports intelligent decision making that empowers organizations to transition from a reactive service model to selling profitable solutions and outcomes to customers.
If you want to learn more about the power of Asset 360 you can access the following resources:
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