Wake up time
By now you may be realizing that the service department is really caught in the middle, between the sales department and manufacturing. This is a real challenge for the service department. In order to survive we must build a strong working relationship not only with the customers but also with the sales department and the manufacturer or supplier. I would recommend that each employee be assigned to a liaison group by product line to work as a point of contact between sales and manufacturing. This should be at least two or three employees meeting weekly on new products and monthly as the product ages. They should discuss items such as equipment problems, guide lines for upgrades, trade in values, critical parts, and other items that would improve the relations with the end user. It would help if the groups maintain a list of general subjects to go over to help remind each member of problems they have experienced or of information that was given to them by other technicians.
The service department should initiate this process as we have more to gain, (our jobs). The service department should accept the challenge of pulling these four groups together for the good of the company. The service department is usually the point of contact when problems arise.
I would recommend that one person in each liaison group be assigned to be the contact person for sales and another person be the contact person for manufacturing, so that each has only one primary responsibility and that they contact their counterpart after each meeting even if to report that there are no problems. This will insure that the lines of communications remain open.
If aggressive action is not taken by the service department to address problems and work toward solutions, then others will take action and question the need for the service department. In the future products will not be repaired, but discarded I see this taking place all the time. As an example, I own a very expensive DataScope compass, it started to loose one of the segments in the readout. This is usually a very common problem of a bad contact. The company would not repair, only replace the scope at the dealer cost after the warranty period. The unit was completely sealed and non repairable. I destroyed the unit to discover that I was correct, a bad contact.
The service department must evolve into an information service from a repair service. There will always be a need of more information about products and a point of contact for our customers. We should learn all we can about each new product and become the information point of contact within the company. This information will help now with repairs and later justify our existence when repairs are no longer needed. There should always be a need for a technical person who understands how the equipment works that can explain this to others.
Turn around time
We should always be looking for ways to shorten the repair time. I have already talked about some ways this can be addressed when doing on site repairs, but what about when the equipment is returned to the shop or repair center.
One approach I learned from a coworker in my first year with BARCO Inc., was to go through the repair list each morning and clean out all the easy repairs, saving the harder ones for later in the day, this assured him of always completing several repairs each day. When you work on one unit at a time not moving on until you have completed each repair, you can become bogged down and defeated. It is good to see some completed work each day to feel good about yourself. If you are stumped on a problem, switch off and work awhile on another unit, when you come back to the hard problem something may come to mind to try. However, don't leave the harder units alone for too long before requesting help. Set yourself a time limit to use as a guide for when to ask for assistance.
Lack of parts is usually the most frequent cause of long delays in the repair time. Those who are in charge of stocking parts are always under pressure to keep inventories low and only stock parts that have a high usage and scrapping or returning parts that have not been used in a given time frame.
After years of service work I have observed an anomaly, and if you talk to someone who has been in service work for a long time I believe they will tell you the same thing. The need for a given part will run in threes, you may need a part three times in a row and then not need the part again for over a year! I have always had a problem with stocking procedures that are based on usage.
With onsite repairs where the technician carries some parts, it helps when the other technicians know who has what. When I worked doing on site repairs for Eastman Kodak Company, we each kept a list of the parts carried by the other, then if it was quicker to meet and pick up a part rather than drive back to the stocking location, we would do so. We also made sure that someone had at least one part that may be needed if it was not stocked at the stocking location.
Some times a unit will be stripped of parts for repairs, the problem with this is that the part may not be replaced right away and the time for removing and reinstalling the part is doubled. Another solution is to keep assembles in stock and replace the assembly when the smaller parts are not available. Technicians will usually start to keep a hidden stock of parts from previous repairs if the parts are not available.
I think that the best solution would be to keep a well-stocked parts department, with every part that would be required. The level of repair that you are performing should determine what you stock, assembles or smaller parts. First stock at least one of every major assembly of the product. The simplest way to accomplish this would be to take a unit and break it down into it's major components. Next, take each component and order the parts that you feel may fail, based on your prior experience. This would be an excellent time to develop removal procedures for assembles.
Factory Feedback
We have discussed some of this in an earlier article. However, I cannot stress strong enough how important this is with the introduction of a new product. I would advise sending your contact person for each new product to the factory for a visit. They should tour the assembly line, take notes, pictures, and collect part numbers to use as manuals until the manuals are available. They should also talk to the workers on the line to find out about any difficult areas or problems they are experiencing.
Now you have a strong contact person who will know who to contact and will have the most impact when a modification is needed.
Try not to always send the same person, make sure that each of the technicians experience at least one trip to the factory. If the only person that is visiting the factory is the trainer or supervisor, then you will have only one contact and a large chance that problems will be pushed aside or feedback delayed due to other pressing projects. The technician is the one who is working on the problem and will have the most knowledge about the problem. The factory will also listen more often to the person who is experiencing the problem than second hand information.
The earlier you can have someone involved in a new product, the better, get the jump on the new information and maintain the lead with the information so that the rest of the people in the company will know who to come to when they need help.
Discuss with the factory about a time frame for all problems to be reported to the factory. At the start of a new product the factory will welcome all information, later they will want only the problems that have high numbers. Don't be the weak link and fail to report problems. If your company has more than one service center, one problem from you may mean serval reports company wide.
Keeping it Simple
Long reports and reporting forms look impressive. However, they can be time consuming and discouraging for someone who enjoys working on problems. The liaison contact person should describe the problem in their own words and offer suggestions for the correction when possible. E-mail would be the best means of feedback, unless the return of parts is required. Pictures with the e-mails are great. A picture is worth a thousand words, with the cost of digital cameras now below the 0 mark, each technician should have one at the ready on their bench.
I recommend one that does not require software and works like an external drive, pictures can then be simply copied to the e-mails and shared. Vivitar has the ViviCam, a 3-mega pixel digital camera that is very small and requires only a USB port, and no software. It can even be used as a camcorder when connected to a computer. Great for documenting even the repairs, more about this later.
I suggest keeping all the repair paper work short and simple, check the time being spent on paper work and entering computer data by the technician, you may find that more than half of their time is spent on the paperwork. Automate whenever possible, and avoid having to enter any data more than once.
Replace or Repair?
When each new product becomes available, you should conduct time studies on the disassembly and reassembly of each part and assembly. Compare the cost of this time with the cost of the assembly or subassembly to set guide lines for repairing or replacing a part.
You can use this time study as a hands on training session letting every technician take part and sharing ideals on the best way to remove the parts. I would let everyone take it apart and put it back together again. This may be the best training they could get. After the first person has completed the task, let them teach the next person, that way each will be exposed to the details of the equipment twice. And by talking someone through the procedures the learning will be reinforced as well as short cuts discovered.
Review these guide lines from time to time and make sure that everyone has a copy and understands why a replacement may be made instead of a repair. Remember that a technician will usually lean toward making the repair for the enjoyment of it.
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