Most organizations recognize the importance of a ‘speedy response’ to a quality issue or a customer complaint.
In fact, faster service response time has been named as a top priority for many service lifecycle management efforts. The significant demand for manufacturers and service organizations to resolve customer issues promptly, and to quickly mitigate any product quality issues has become a challenge.
How do you overcome this challenge and implement a solution? The equation involves equipping service technicians and customer facing roles with the right information at the right time, along with aligning parts/inventory and service personnel.
For example, let’s look at a very realistic situation.
Imagine your dryer machine breaks down. You call the manufacturer and learn you have to wait three days for a service visit. Depending on your patience (and laundry needing to be done) this could be the beginning of a very unpleasant customer experience.
But what if that same manufacturer was able to pull up your model, and already knew they had visited you a year ago with a similar issue. How might your experience be impacted if they were to tell you there was a 90 percent first-time fix rate for your specific dryer and a technician would be able to show up with the specific parts needed to fix your issue?
This is the type of service that customers want and are starting to expect.
It is easy to see how putting the right information in a service technicians’ hands at the right time is so important.
Service technicians want to be able to see service information and technical service bulletins. They want to see information on the job and have access to just in time training. They have a desire for formal training, tech assist helpdesks and hotlines, and safety instructions.
So how do we enable and empower technicians to optimize service experiences and exceed customer expectations?
Here are some of the best practices that we have gathered:
- 1. Provide access to technical/service parts information when technicians need it
- 2. Make that information easy to search
- 3. Supply accurate product and configuration information including all parts and service history
- 4. Enable easy ways of ordering parts
- 5. Offer just in time training/help
‘Smart’ service management is your key to success.
Your service information needs to be managed at a network level. This ensures that all your players in the service web have access to the right information, at the moment they need it.
Adding a modern layer of accessibility to your information is a critical part of ensuring your service network can operate efficiently and effectively. This is what will help you drive positive customer experiences throughout your product lifecycle.
We offer the technology solutions and technical expertise to make real-time service information delivery a reality. Contact us to learn more about our Product Development Information Services group, PTC’s Arbortext and Service Lifecycle Management technologies, and the PLM solutions that can effectively link together your product data and service part information.
Here’s why engineering processes affect services and why streamlining information could solve the whole problem.
The Problem: Lack of Communication
Let’s be honest, engineering and manufacturing departments do not always communicate product changes to service. This is just the start of how your engineering processes affect services.
The Result: High Costs
When technicians reference outdated product information and arrive with incorrect parts, this leads to longer service visits, extraneous costs, longer downtime, and lowered customer satisfaction.
The Solution: Streamlining Information
Streamline the way you service teams access and use product information. The best way to accomplish this involves accurately transforming eBOMs (engineering bill of materials) to sBOMs (service bill of materials) and maintaining the fidelity of that information after engineering changes.
It’s time to stop letting your engineering processes affect services.
Take full advantage of the product data your organization has already created.
Structure service manuals and part information based on how a specific product is configured and serviced. Reuse engineering and manufacturing data in the service environment. Provide configuration-specific information to service technicians. Create a single point of access for your service content. Avoid text – use and repurpose graphics, animations, and CAD information when possible. And link service information to engineering information so changes propagate.
Next: Identify Your Service Needs
Identify what should go in your sBOM to ensure your sBOMs meet the needs of the service department. Examples might include what is serviceable versus what is replaceable, the status of a part, the components, models, grouped items, and more.
The Goal: Transforming Your Services
Remember: the ultimate goal is to make your customers happy. As a result of combining best practices with the right technology to support service and parts information management and publication you will see a higher customer satisfaction, improved technician effectiveness, improved brand reputation, higher profitability (due to lower revenue and service cost), time savings, and higher revenue (from repeat business and customer loyalty).
We have a team of technical communications specialists that would love to talk with you about your current state and current initiatives.
What if a bartender knew exactly when one of their kegs was about to tap out just by looking at a volume meter on an app on their phones? Their bar back could switch out the keg before impatient patrons demand more. What if liquor shelves had weight sensors that measured when someone adds or removes liquor? Or an app on a phone existed that notified management when and what liquor is moved? Or better yet, a storage system that communicates with the front bar, knows which liquor is being moved, and manages inventory according to actual usage? Inventory would be a lot more accurate and there would be less time spent trying to figure out what needs to be in the next order.
When smart connectivity allows for a smoother restaurant or brewery experience, you’re most likely going to have a better time without realizing it had anything to do with the Internet of Things (IoT). For businesses, IoT solutions are creating more opportunities to connect products with the Internet. And for the average consumer, IoT solutions are creating easier access and control of products through smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
Leaders are investing in an IoT strategy as they plan the future success of their products and services. You can add smart connectivity to your products – even if you’re in the beer industry.
Here are a few industry leaders that leverage the Internet of Things to drive their success.
Deschutes Brewery
Headquartered in Bend, Oregon, Deschutes Brewery has been making craft beer since 1988. You may be familiar with their rich porter Black Butte created with hints of chocolate and coffee or their Fresh Squeezed IPA brimming with grapefruit enriched hops.
The Deschutes team partnered up with a consultant group and Microsoft last year in efforts to improve their brewing process. With a total of nine brewing phases, each phase has to be closely watched to maintain the quality of their beer. Machine learning is the application of artificial intelligence that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being programmed. Deschutes has implemented machine learning and predictive analysis to automate and improve their fermentation processes. When pairing IoT sensors with the Cortana Intelligence Suite, Microsoft’s predictive learning software, the analytics tool determines the percentage of beer fermented in each batch and predicts when it’s time to switch to the next phase. The Deschutes team can now accurately schedule the nine brewing phases accordingly to ensure the quality of beer is consistent with all of their batches.
Connecting the beer tank sensors with machine learning gave Deschutes an IoT solution and allowed them to improve their brew processes. Deschutes reduced their fermentation process by 24-48 hours. They are now able to focus more time on creating new brands and maintaining the quality of the existing ones. Deschutes is looking at furthering the use of this smart, connected technology by looking into using it for preventive maintenance for their equipment so that brewers would be alerted if parts are due for service or replacement.
Buffalo Wild Wings
Buffalo Wild Wings, headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, is a popular sports bar that has an average of 24-32 beers on tap. Due to major growth of the company and being one of the top 10 fastest-growing restaurants in the U.S., BWW needed to keep up with the growing demand of their customer’s needs. The company faced two major challenges. Both challenges prompted the need to leverage technology and the Internet of Things for an improved operational efficiency.
The first challenge was that they needed to eliminate the product loss that results from comping drinks, excessive or bad pours, and generous bartenders that give beer away without entering the sale in the system. BWW implemented a system called BeerBoard that monitors beer flow data from IoT sensors in the taps to Mulesoft, an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), where managers can compare beer output to sales information pulled from their Aloha point-of-sale systems. Restaurant managers can accurately determine whether they are running an effective beer operation with the help of the IoT solution found from linking the sensors to BWWs data management systems.
Their second challenge was managing the demand of the assortment of beers for each location all year round. BWW used BeerBoard’s new SmartBar beer management platform to switch and assign new beers corresponding to tap lines. Pour data and sales data would be captured through the platform where all BWW restaurants would have access to the reports to measure performance of each beer. The ability to gain beer preference insight brought a powerful competitive advantage to Buffalo Wild Wing’s brand and reputation.
By working with a few different companies that provided the IoT flow sensors and a software solution to manage their data, BWW started to accurately predict preferences and optimize inventory planning. The company now leverages the Internet of Things to accurately track beer consumption.
How to Bring Your Products to Life with the IoT
Race up the learning curve and find a partner that’s driven to find and implement the right IoT solution for your unique business. Make sure they have the engineering expertise necessary to bring your products to life. EAC Product Development Solutions is a company that transforms the way companies design, manufacture, connect to, and service their products. EAC is on a mission to help companies innovate, optimize, and win in the marketplace by selecting the right IoT solution — like PTC ThingWorx. With ThingWorx allows organizations to connect their products to the Internet and give customers the tools they need for easy access and control.
Ready to dive in? Our team of specialists, engineers, and developers would love to help you bring a working proof of concept to life. The demo application image below is an example of how our engineers can use ThingWorx to pull together data from many sources and deliver data to your fingertips. The demo shows how a local brewery can use the app to access plant conditions, truck tracking, order tracking, weather forecasting, collaboration, and beer tasting — all in real-time simulation.
Watch our Connect Services video to see how our engineers can connect your products with the Internet of Things!
Knowledge is power. Keep track of your data if you’re not doing it already. You’re bound to learn something from it. Better yet – apply smart connectivity to your process. Contact our Design and Engineering Services at EAC Product Development Solutions to realize your product potential and to find your IoT solution.
We have had a long-standing relationship with a local manufacturing company over the years and are proud to share their success story with the rest of the product development world. PTC Windchill, PTC’s PLM solution, helps Virnig Manufacturing go paperless, streamline operations, and save over 325 hours per year.
What stands out about this case is the fact that the company was able to reduce or eliminate paper trails in all departments in less than one month thanks to a single tool. Why is going paperless such a big deal? Companies go out of their way to eliminate unnecessary processes in order to operate at a maximum efficiency. Most companies will invest in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system to streamline the flow of product data through the organization, improve quality and efficiency, and better manage their business. PLM systems organize a company’s product data in one place so there are no obstacles between departments and accurate product, manufacturing, and service information.
Virnig Manufacturing has been designing and producing skid steer attachments for over 27 years. Due to an expanding workforce over the years, Virnig faced a new challenge of organizing the over-flowing piles of critical work documents. Darin Virnig, Engineering and Production Manager, and his team kept all work documents in large red binders throughout the facility and in each department. Due to the recent growth and expansion of the business, Darin needed to find a file management solution.
Download the case study to see how Virnig Manufacturing is leveraging a right-sized PLM solution — PTC Windchill — to overcome some of their biggest challenges.
If you don’t have PLM in your organization at all, reach out to us. We have a team of experts ready to answer any questions you may have. They would love understand your situation and the benefits of implementing PLM in your organization.
In my last blog, Hearing Voices Through Connected Manufacturing & Machine Learning I tried to convey how expensive manufacturing equipment could (and should) be telling you how it’s performing and if it’s going to malfunction. While it seems futuristic and expensive, I’ll attempt to dispel both challenges in this post.
One starting point is the reality of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its impact on manufacturing is recognized by major governments across the globe. It’s referred to as ‘Smart Nation’ in Singapore, ‘Made in China 2025’ in China, ‘Industries 4.0’ in Germany, and generally as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) by various industry leading organizations in the United States.
Regardless of what the governing bodies are doing, we’re in business to make money.
How can you do that?
Use the IIoT and all that it can do to achieve your business initiatives.
That’s when some new compelling or wiz-bang approach to things can actually make sense (or cents). What I mean is this, don’t treat the IIoT as something new or as a separate initiative. Rather, embrace the technology for what it is and how it can propel your existing business initiatives.
The ideals of my previous blog, preventive maintenance, enterprise monitoring, and increased ROI are probably already on your visions and strategy hit-list for making more money. These are exactly the core business initiatives that are possible. When these are being met, the feeling of work being ‘expensive’ shifts to understanding the value of smart, connected operations. This comes from connected systems and equipment flowing data from previously disparate systems into a data refinery directly connecting operational metrics to core business initiatives in real-time. Then you can focus on the value.
Move forward into what’s current and available if you’ve been sitting for a while.
As for this being ‘futuristic,’ well I guess you could say it is, but it’s more focused on moving forward. This is fundamentally about transforming the way you design, manufacture, connect to, and service your products. It’s a major shift into the future.
It’s not about unobtainable science-fiction — rather its attainable with modern equipment and easy add-ons to old equipment. This is enabled even further through easy access to high volume scalable process computer systems in the cloud and at the edge. It’s even become expected in newer equipment.
The advent of IoT Platforms like PTC’s ThingWorx has created systems that address all aspects of the IoT stack and support smooth and complete implementation. Starting with Industrial Connectivity to accelerate the connection of existing equipment into a central hub, you can rapidly bring equipment into the ‘connected’ state by feeding the ability to give your equipment a voice. A scalable and flexible environment for creating applications and role-centric mashups of refined information comes together in ThingWorx Foundation. Augmented Reality runs right through this system as well as predictive analytics in ThingWorx Analytics. ThingWorx Analytics are available to turn these concepts into reality and truly give the equipment in your operation a voice.
So, are you hearing voices yet? Or maybe wishing that you did? We’d love to help make this happen — whether it is through connecting the dots related to strategy, providing technology, implementing it, or even helping to retro-fit existing equipment so it can speak, let us hear your voice and we’ll help give your operation a voice as well.
If you’d like more information about connecting your products through smart manufacturing, you may find our brochure helpful.
Are you hearing voices? If not, you should be!
Well, are you hearing voices? You know, the voices telling you how to make more money, or the whispers of how you can improve your business, or maybe they’re loud and proud notices of problems before they occur. Where would such messages of insight and prosperity come from? I’m talking about the voices of all that expensive equipment you have that keeps producing your product.
As manufacturers, we all invest heavily in the equipment, maintenance, and staff to keep it running smoothly or sometimes get it running quickly after unexpected malfunctions. What would it mean to your business if your equipment could tell you how well it’s running and if something is going to malfunction before it even happens? The ability for your equipment to ‘talk’ to you could substantially impact planning, proactive maintenance, utilization, production rates, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and most certainly the bottom line.
Business 101: businesses require a solid Return on Investment (ROI). High cap ex-equipment implies the “I” and requires production to make the “R.” We all run this daily balance of scheduling maintenance, guessing what needs to be fixed, hoping everything runs right over the third shift and talking ourselves into the thought that we’re getting the most from the equipment. Taking a long look in the mirror might challenge that thought.
Considering connectivity is cheaper and ‘nearly’ everywhere, along with easier ways to stream, collect and refine data into actionable information, the realistic impact of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) brings some futuristic opportunities to your desktop for implementation today.
Think About the Possibilities
What if your equipment could self-diagnose problems, predict failure timelines and prioritize maintenance based on enterprise-wide visibility to OEE, production demands and current performance?
How about leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) to peer into the heart of operating equipment for live feedback and real-time vision-based maintenance instruction holo-deck style?
What if you could view the rates and predicted issues of entire production lines from a single-pane-of-glass? Imagine viewing this with live interactive graphics, drill-down analytics, and mashups pulling data from existing silos of information.
While some of this seems like a ‘nice-to-have future state,’ rest assured, this is as real and available as it comes. It’s what can be implemented so you can start hearing voices. It’s ThingWorx. ThingWorx is a tool to enable developers such as yourself to rapidly connect, create, and deploy breakthrough applications, solutions, and experiences for the smart, connected world. Furthermore, ThingWorx Analytics enables you to uncover the true value of your smart connected manufacturing floor data. Learn from past data, understand and predict the future, and make decisions that will enhance outcomes.
If you’d like more information about connecting your products through smart manufacturing, explore our piece that serves as a primer on the fundamentals of ThingWorx.
