Aug 17

To Reuse or Not To Reuse Parts, That is the Question

By Automotive, Design Reuse, Manufacturing, PLM One Comment

Design Reuse

For years I have been critical of the automotive industry and its overzealous and careless tendency to design new parts instead of reusing existing designs, inventory parts and suppliers.  The Rationale to resist the temptation to innovate and reuse tried and proven parts is broad and multifaceted. Among the chief arguments:

  • Accelerate time to market and reduce the number and severity of ECOs
  • Reuse tooling and manufacturing processes
  • Improve quality and have better estimation of volume manufacturing ramp up, service load and warranty costs
  • Reduce the need to recreate work instructions, remove and replace procedures and related documentation
  • Lower manufacturing and final product cost
  • Reduce inventory and related costs

A useful way to look at this is that in addition to the benefits of reusing a physical commodity, design reuse promotes knowledge reuse, which has broader and longer lasting benefits.

The argument for design and part reuse gets a bit more involved when we look beyond small parts and subassemblies, which the average consumer doesn’t care about. What about systems that represent the brand identity, such as the engine or transmission? Do consumers know and care whether an engine is exclusive to the brand? How does this knowledge influence buying decisions?

A recent study by Automotive News of auto dealers offers an interesting perspective on the topic. The study indicates that consumers are split almost evenly about how they feel about the brand exclusivity of the engine in the car they’re shopping for and how this knowledge influences their busying decision.

Interestingly, according to the study, consumers care much more about the brand exclusivity of the transmission: more than 50% of consumers now and care whether the car’s transmission is exclusive to that brand.

An even more surprising finding, which, quite frankly, make me somewhat leery about the reliability of this very small (n= 169) study, is that 71% of consumers know and care whether the axles are exclusive to that brand. Or, at least, this is what auto dealers believe.

For some reason, the study did not ask about common car chassis that might have a stronger impact on consumer decisions, because it makes it easier to pitch one brand against the other. A good example is Volkswagen’s A4 platform that is used in a range of vehicles from the luxury sporty Audi TT to the lower end SEAT and Skoda. While most consumers are not aware of the pervasive use common platforms, will they change their mind if they did?

The fidelity of the study’s findings aside, it’s clear that line executives and designers face a dilemma: how far can they reuse parts and systems before they start diluting the brand identity. But finding the right mix of model-exclusive and common design, especially lower level assemblies and parts, is an important step in improving operations while maintain brand’s identity and integrity.

Aug 16

Field Service Excellence: Right Technician, Right Information

By Field Service, Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) 3 Comments

Lackluster Service Performance

For product companies and service organizations, field service continues to be a critical element in the quest for greater profitability and improved customer satisfaction. Field service excellence is determined to a great extent by the effectiveness and efficiency of the service visit, as well as by the experience delivered to the customer.

Fueled by pervasive connectivity, practically free access to GPS and GIS information and cheap mobile devices, the field service community is abuzz about scheduling, route planning and tracking technicians on their way to repair a piece of critical equipment.  Indeed, these are important, especially in times when fuel is pricey and companies make efforts to curb air pollution.

However, cross industry studies reveal workforce utilization in field service organizations hovers around 65%, meaning that technicians waste precious time until they get to the real job, the one that the customer actually cares about.

Waste and Inefficiency

Actually, this disappointing utilization of the field service workforce is a result of numerous factors, not only long travel time.

Two countering forces are in play here. First, the field service industry has been experiencing a steady decline in workforce due to an aging population and egress of experienced service technicians. At the same time, the interest of the younger workforce in field service positions is at all-time low, and many product and service organizations struggle to attract, train and retain qualified service technicians.

In addition, margin pressures and, in some instances, incorrect attitude towards technicians’ education result in minimal investments in training.

The result is a growing knowledge gap that is difficult to contain.

Organizations that have not made the right investments in hiring and training find it increasingly difficult to allocated workforce effectively. In additional to facing chronic shortage of qualified technicians, service organizations struggle to optimize the allocation of their workforce. Lacking cross-product knowledge and certifications, fewer highly qualified technicians are very busy and have to travel longer and more frequently, while others sit idle waiting for the next service call.

Wrench Turning Time

But the biggest challenge facing the service organization is delivering what the customer cares the most about: delivering efficient and effective service onsite. And, given the difficulties in allocating qualified personnel effectively, it is no surprise that the average field service performance statistics are somewhat lackluster.

In a recent article I discussed service as a knowledge intensive activity. Quite often, technicians spend time looking for information, researching solutions and alternatives, and calling the technical help desk. From the customer’s point of view, service technicians should spend more of their onsite time turning wrenches.

Right Technician, Right Information

Improving workforce utilization is critical for field service profitability. Working longer hours and more shifts isn’t the correct answer.

What can product and service organizations do to improve the efficacy of their field force?

Information

The most useful service information is task-specific and equipment specific. That is, it is specific to the “as maintained” configuration of the equipment and organized around the tasks to be performed: troubleshooting, remove-and-replace, and verification.

In most cases technicians see little use in information that is too generic as many theory of operation documents tend to be. Similarly, technicians do not need documentation to perform routine tasks they are very familiar with.

On the other hand, even the most experienced technicians find documents that encapsulate the most recent organizational knowledge very helpful.

Cross Product Information and Training

What about the less experienced technicians and the need to improve the utilization of the workforce by equipping technicians with tools to service a broader range of products?

First, cross product training will create a larger pools of qualified technicians that can be allocated more efficiently rather than having too many idle technicians waiting for a service call on “their” equipment.

The other part of the answer goes back to service information.  While experienced technicians need less theory and fewer details, other technicians, especially those that have less frequent access to unique equipment configurations will find more detailed—yet task and configuration specific—information useful.

IoT and Remote Diagnostics

Instrumented and connected devices that offer remote access to diagnostics can obviously improve service operations and workforce utilization.  A service center can run diagnostics remotely and hopefully gather enough information to identify the root case and make sure the technicians has the right skills and information as well as the correct part to remedy the problem.

But before we declare IoT as the answer to most field service organization woes, it’s worth noting that remote access, in itself, does not provide certain information that is often key to effective service execution onsite: as-maintained configuration and maintenance history. Good PDM and ERP systems that are kept up to date are as important.

Spare Parts Management

A full discussion of spare parts inventory management is clearly out of the scope of this blog, so I’ll mention just a couple of key points.

Unless spare parts are stocked onsite (usually not a good idea) or in the technician’s van, it’s critical that the technician has enough knowledge about the potential failure root causes and the equipment’s as-maintained configuration so the correct part can be shipped or picked up en route.  Here, again, the combination of diagnostics, PLM, ERP and IoT provides context for making this determination.

Quite often technicians maintain a “trunk inventory” of spare part. While this practice appears effective to address the need for immediate access to spare parts, the practice of having parts circulating outside the main inventory can lead to unnecessary increase in inventory, have a negative impact on quality, and conceivably increase the number of repeat service calls.

Reduce Paperwork

Finally, both customers and technicians want to see more wrench-turning time and spend as little time as possible on paperwork.

[Photo: MorgueFile.com]

 

Jul 24
PTC LiveWorx 2015

PTC’s IoT Strategy: Realizing the Connected World

By Internet of Things (IoT), Mergers & Acquisitions 2 Comments

PTC’s IoT Journey

Since James Heppelmann took the helm at PTC in October of 2010, he has been hard at work, challenging the status quo among top-tier PLM vendors and seeking to redefine PLM and expand its influence beyond its traditional engineering boundaries. The comprehensive strategy has had multiple threads and terms, starting with service lifecycle management (SLM) and the notion of product “servitization”, and evolving recently to the Internet of Things (IoT). Mr. Heppelmann wants to keep the “things” PTC’s customers design, operate, and service at the center of everything PTC is doing.

This well laid out strategy was supplemented with a rapid succession of technology acquisitions. A quick chronology of the last five years or so might be instructive. Read More

Jul 22
Section perpendiculaire du moulin des Verdiers (Jean-Jacque Lequeu, 1778)

Who Needs Service Manuals?

By Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) 3 Comments

A Bit of Perspective

I want to start this blog post with two personal stories that exemplify the difficulty to provide service personnel highly relevant and effective service information.

Some years ago I was advising a leading industrial equipment manufacturer on various topics related to product service lifecycle management and service operations. We were nearing the launch date of a new machine, but as the project had experienced multiple setbacks and some of the milestone dates had slipped, the service documentation wasn’t going to be ready in time. The product release rules dictated that service information be available at launch time, but delaying the launch for that reason would have been prohibitive.

Management response to the problem was simply to omit certain sections of the service manuals. Traditionally, manuals included a hefty Theory of Operation section, rich with illustrations and photos. To make up for the lost time, the Theory of Operation section was eliminated, and the number of graphic illustrations in other sections was reduced. You can probably guess the end of this story: there was not a single complaint from service technicians about the missing information, nor was there a noticeable degradation in field service performance. Apparently, service technicians did not find this information very useful. Read More

Jul 09

Closing The Service Knowledge Gap

By Automotive, Field Service, Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) One Comment

The Growing Service Knowledge Gap

Maintaining, servicing and repairing complex vehicle systems is a growing challenge for OEMs of automotive and off-highway equipment. Multiple research studies I conducted in the automotive and off-highway industries demonstrate the magnitude of the problem:

  • Typically, repair shops are able to fix about 80% of the cars during the first customer visit. While about third of all auto dealerships manage a respectable first time fix (FTF) rate of 90%, nearly 20% of dealership manage a disappointing FTF of less than 70%.
  • When OEMs audit repair activities for warranty reimbursement and quality assessment, they are unable to detect a failure in 37% of replaced parts and mark them as “no fault found” (NFF).

Poor service performance levies significant financial and logistics burden on OEMs, tarnishes the brand image and damage customer loyalty.

An obvious observation is that the increase in vehicle technology complexity, and, in particular, electric powertrains, advanced infotainment systems and telematics, are the prime contributors to service difficulties. We can only expect dealership technicians to face similar, if not greater, obstacles handling the upcoming wave of connected car technologies.

While new vehicle technologies can certainly pose significant hurdles to delivering effective, efficient and safe service, engineers and service planners should bear in mind additional operational issues that further lessen the capacity of service organizations to deliver excellent service:

  • Accelerated time to market of new products and subsystems, and late release of software-based components reduce the organization’s ability to learn, author relevant service information, and conduct effective training.
  • The increase in the number of product variants and frequent software updates, coupled with increase in reliability, reduce the hands-on experience of service technicians and increase their reliance on high quality training and service information.
  • The industry, as a whole, is experiencing knowledge attrition and skill shortage caused by the gradual retirement of an aging workforce and difficulties attracting, training and retaining skilled technicians.

Closing the Chronic Service Knowledge Gap

To improve service, product companies should view service lifecycle management (SLM) not as a mere tool to manage service transactions, but rather as a strategy to manage service knowledge and close the chronic knowledge gap. Key action to consider:

Elaina Farnsworth, the CEO of Mobile Comply, offers the following perspective in a Q&A session the company shared with me:

Q: Since safety is our top priority, and V2V technology represents the next great advance in saving lives, how will we prepare our workforce?

A: Through training and collaboration with OEMs, Tier I and Tier II suppliers. Since NHTSA released that the car is a safer place if it’s connected, it’s inevitable that some of the access from the telematics systems will need to be opened up to communicate relative to safety. That said, the telematics community needs to be astutely aware of what this change looks like and vulnerabilities need to be opened up when the car becomes truly connected.

Q: What is your projection of the affect that mobility will have on various industries?

A: Technology platforms are shifting and communication channels are being reinvented. Connected Vehicle is now a market that is projected to reach $130 billion by 2019. By 2022, there will be 1.8 million automotive connections worldwide. Industry sectors not only include automotive, but also insurers, financial institutions, health, mobile and nomadic devices, application developers, telecommunications, analytics companies and much more.

Q: What are the biggest disconnects in this new wave of Connected Vehicle?

A: There are many innovations coming from both the IT and the automotive industries to get our vehicles more connected- to our Smartphones, to other cars, and to traffic and roads. The challenge is that IT and Engineering departments are focusing on two different things and speaking two different languages. There are specific design elements and government requirements that must be factored into each new idea.

Q: How can we prepare the current workforce and the upcoming workforce for this rapidly changing technology?

A: We can offer training and certifications. Our newly launched Connected Vehicle Professional Certification covers all elements of the Connected Vehicle- from passive safety to mobility to information and entertainment, and why it is necessary to factor all aspects before and during design of a vehicle.