Sales and maintenance are a central area of responsibility for a service department. It is advisable to observe a few principles during implementation.
The The future of service is being driven, among other things, by a shift from interval-based forms of maintenance to data-based strategies such as Predictive maintenance be shaped. At the moment, however, this is still a long way off and will probably remain so for some time to come. A Service Manager should therefore reflect from time to time on whether all processes in his department are actually running optimally when carrying out and planning preventive maintenance work. There are various problem areas and starting points on the way to Maintenance Excellence.
Preventive maintenance is an interval-based maintenance strategy in which maintenance work is carried out at predefined (usually time-based) intervals. It should be distinguished from data-driven forms such as Predictive maintenance.
Centrally managed maintenance lists are a must!
First clarify at what intervals which parts are to be serviced. You can then derive the target times for the individual maintenance jobs from this. Finally, you should provide your service technicians with a guideline for how long they should need for a job.
Maintenance lists should be defined centrally by a single body and regularly updated only by this body if adjustments are necessary. This is an important point, as maintenance work should always be carried out in a standardized manner.
Over the years, it can happen that individual employees of a company delete specifications from maintenance lists or add new items on their own. This is not advantageous, as the customer should be offered a uniform service. If someone can contribute a valid point for improvement, this must be coordinated. This is the only way to achieve sufficient Quality assurance in after-sales.
You can also get into legal trouble here. If the customer discovers that technicians are not performing maintenance according to centrally specified checklists, this can quickly lead to warranty and liability claims. - Dr. Simon Tonat
Preventive maintenance should be carried out proactively!
Maintenance often serves as a buffer for the service planner so that the technicians can be provided with work if repairs and installations are not carried out. This is not fundamentally wrong. Some Service desperados take this to the extreme, however. The concept can quickly blow up in your face if you drive in undercapacity.
Then you suddenly realize in October that in the remaining 3 months until the end of the year, 80% of the planned maintenance work has to be carried out. The result is either massive overtime or you simply let it slide and hope that the customer doesn't notice. Spoiler warning: He usually notices!
If you charge for maintenance on a time and material basis, this is not quite so bad, as only customer satisfaction suffers. But if you charge for maintenance via Service contracts invoiced, then has to credit a large part of the turnover at the end of the year. This is embarrassing, but unfortunately happens very often.
To avoid this, it is advisable to plan maintenance work clearly in advance on a monthly basis over the course of a year. For each month, you determine which jobs are to be carried out and always fix the dates with the customer in the previous month. Maintenance should also only be postponed once. Any further postponements must be agreed with the management. In this way, you consistently prevent the postponement of preventive maintenance work and dissatisfied customers.
Digitize your maintenance checklists!
By filling in the maintenance checklists via the app, you can collect a lot of useful data about your machinery. This offers many advantages. For example, you will know after how many operating hours individual components need to be replaced on average. This data can also help you to design and develop better machines in the future, as wear-related weak points of previous machines are revealed.
Preventive maintenance is for the young and wild or external!
Maintenance is the most standardized activity of all after-sales services. That's why you can send inexperienced service technicians into action here. Technicians with a little more know-how can be used for the Cost-efficient implementation of installations use. However, carrying out repairs requires the most know-how. A large number of malfunctions can occur here, the rectification of which requires very specialized expertise. Of course, you use your best people for this.
Also bear in mind that you can outsource maintenance jobs to freelancers or industrial service providers from time to time if you are under pressure in terms of costs or capacity. This allows your service department to focus on more complicated issues, but of course you will have to deal with a much more volatile business if the maintenance is outsourced as a buffer. However, mature organizations that have their planning process under control should definitely consider this step.
Introduce maintenance kits!
Maintenance kits define a scope of consumable parts that are replaced in the course of maintenance. It is best to document the use of these maintenance kits in the maintenance agreements and service contracts that you conclude with the customer. This will reduce discussions with customers about whether some parts can cope with another maintenance cycle. In most cases, the customer will no longer remember such a discussion as soon as the machine or system needs to be repaired as a result of this procedure.
In this way, you also safeguard your sales of wear parts. This is very desirable when you consider that the market for these parts is usually under very strong competitive pressure. Customers are relatively familiar with the prices of wear parts in most industries because they have to buy them very often. In addition, there are usually a relatively large number of competitors on the market.
Major players such as Amazon and Alibaba are increasingly entering the high-margin spare parts business and are mostly focusing on these top-selling products. There are also start-ups such as Misumiwhich have specialized in the cost-effective production of parts in small series and are thus also penetrating the spare parts market.
Maintenance orders are not the most complicated services in the After-Sales. This is precisely why the management of these services is sometimes neglected. With the points mentioned, you may be able to improve your processes in the area of preventive maintenance.
