HEAVY MACHINERY MAINTENANCE
The service business of a large company, managed with innovative tools and high return on investment from the first year.
THE CHALLENGE
In the context of industrial plant installation and maintenance, a felt need lies in the streamlined management of the entire service management process, with a focus on the management of heavy, structured machinery and large volumes of technical information related to them. The centralisation and sharing of activities becomes important in situations where mobile management is organised by maintenance technicians as much as by area dealers who follow customers. Auriservice, a company from Lombardy that has been operating in the embroidery sector for over 40 years, was looking for a solution that complied with certain requirements for better overall management of its technical service activities:
- Detailed coding of assets in use by customers;
- Effective reorganisation of the after-sales service managed partly by in-house maintenance staff and partly by area dealers and technicians;
- Document dematerialisation and digitisation of workflows;
- Customisable technical data sheets that can be differentiated by machine type;
- Management and compilation of plant booklets to be sent at the installation site;
- Tracking of internal activities;
- Ability for customers to open service requests in complete autonomy;
- Interfacing the technical assistance module with the ERP already used by the company.
THE CHALLENGE
In the context of industrial plant installation and maintenance, a felt need lies in the streamlined management of the entire service management process, with a focus on the management of heavy, structured machinery and large volumes of technical information related to them. The centralisation and sharing of activities becomes important in situations where mobile management is organised by maintenance technicians as much as by area dealers who follow customers. Auriservice, a company from Lombardy that has been operating in the embroidery sector for over 40 years, was looking for a solution that complied with certain requirements for better overall management of its technical service activities:
- Detailed coding of assets in use by customers;
- Effective reorganisation of the after-sales service managed partly by in-house maintenance staff and partly by area dealers and technicians;
- Document dematerialisation and digitisation of workflows;
- Customisable technical data sheets that can be differentiated by machine type;
- Management and compilation of plant booklets to be sent at the installation site;
- Tracking of internal activities;
- Ability for customers to open service requests in complete autonomy;
- Interfacing the technical assistance module with the ERP already used by the company.
THE SOLUTION
The first aspect managed was the interfacing with the management system already present in the company. Thanks to the collaboration with the reference software company, the solution was defined in a short time. The operation was carried out thanks to the creation of a bi-directional border database capable of acquiring the data necessary for service activities, but at the same time returning those useful for invoicing and warehouse management. Secondly, the assistance module consisting of:
- Assist ERP;
- AreaGate, management web portal;
- ASSIST mobile app for field service management for both in-house technicians and area dealers;
- Scheduler, a tool for planning and assigning activities to operators in the area.
The seamless integration between these systems allows not only a reduction in task management time, but also complete autonomy in the creation of technical data sheets and checklists that can be filled out via the Assist mobile app. From now on, in fact, technicians can download manuals and update programmes for the machines on which they are to perform work, update technical data sheets on the move, and compile checklists dedicated to the installation and maintenance of machinery, which will then be automatically sent to the customer. The Assist philosophy is also applied to the machine set-up procedures in the in-house showroom. This allows traceability of activity-related costs, both for labour and for the use of goods and spare parts. In order to grant autonomy to customers, Customer Access has been activated, which via a dedicated login from the AreaGate portal or ASSIST App allows them to open service calls and consult their service history. In addition, an Email Piping system has also been configured, capable of automatically inserting assistance calls within the ERP if they come from authorised addresses. This system is particularly suitable in cases of fault reports sent by automatic systems.
KEY CHARACTERISTICS AND RESULTS
The adoption of the Assist professional suite has led to significant benefits:
- Digitalisation and integration of processes has enabled a reduction in task management time, from the input of the request for intervention, through the assignment of tasks to technicians, to the closure of the intervention;
- Perfect traceability of the internal and external workflow;
- Possibility of managing and compiling documents via the Assist App, even on the move;
- Timeliness in the delivery of documentation to customers;
- Significant reduction in paperwork;
- Customer autonomy thanks to the Customer Access and Email Piping service.
TECHNOLOGIES IN USE IN THE PROJECT
The key tools that EUROSYSTEM2000 used to successfully complete this project are: