OEM & Lieferant - Ausgabe 1/2021

72 Engineering Partner The path from the original message to the re- pair order simply takes too long. And in the end, the service technician on site wants to start the repair, but has the wrong spare parts in his hands. How long and complicated should the path from the fault message to the successful repair by the technician be? The ever-increasing complexity of products due to the rising proportion of electronics and software, a greater number of variants and versions, more complex organisations in growing companies and ever-increasing de- mands on troubleshooting times and quality, combined with increased cost pressure, are a real challenge to manufacturers of complex products who need to align their after-sales processes and constantly optimise them in or- der to meet current requirements. Customer satisfaction and efficiency are the driving factors for urgent digitisation measures. Le- gal requirements that make it necessary, for example, to make repair and maintenance in- formation available electronically to external partners and other service providers are add- ing to the challenge. Smart, intelligent information portals inte- grated into the company‘s backend systems and the constant reduction of media discon- tinuities across system boundaries are the cornerstones of success. The goal is to opti- mally support the employees in the service organisation through process transparency, acceleration, error reduction, flexibility, cost reduction and the use of up-to-date media: Digital and paperless end-to-end and, where necessary, across international borders! The result is, among other things, an increase in product availability, a reduction in warranty costs, profitable full-service contracts, calcu- lable total cost of ownership (TCO) and new opportunities for generating additional busi- ness. For example, vehicle downtimes can be signifi- cantly reduced by providing comprehensive, correct, up-to-date and fast vehicle-specific repair and maintenance information via a smart and integrated information portal. Diagnostic and spare parts data, product doc- umentation and repair and maintenance infor- mation are made available to service staff on a vehicle-specific basis via a central entry point. Any information required is made available immediately, and process quality and speed are significantly increased. Based on vehicle diagnostics, maintenance, repair and auto- mated billing can be carried out immediately - both reactively and proactively in the sense of predictive maintenance. Feedback informa- tion that arises during repair and maintenance work and is reported back from the workshop is immediately available to the systems for re- search and development, production or sales, for example. The data feedback into asset, known error or service level agreement (SLA) databases makes the entire system network „smarter and smarter“ over time, i.e. the in- sights from these data evaluations flow into the optimisation of development, procure- ment and production. Self-service functions for service partners and end customers also lighten the load on the service organisation. E-commerce, such as an online shop for spare parts, accessories or new products, completes the offer and generates additional business, worldwide and 24/7. Smart, intelligent, after-sales information portals Fault notified, cause identified, malfunction fixed. That‘s how service works today! By Oliver Nietsch, Account Manager IT Systems Development Portals, ServiceXpert GmbH, Hamburg Who hasn‘t experienced this: a notification is received by the customer service department of a vehicle, machine or product manufacturer: By telephone, by fax, via a website form or perhaps over the air from machine to machine. It is a fault message or an advance warning. The subsequent qualification, obtaining of information and error analysis are often very time-consuming. Graphik: © ServiceXpert GmbH S H A R E Figure 1: After Sales Portal and ServiceXpert smart Information Portal Templates Since 1 July 2020, Oliver Nietsch has been responsible for the ServiceXpert department IT System Development Portals in Hamburg. In the newly created unit, he works in close co- operation with the specialists of the IT System Development Diagnostics department and in continuous cooperation with the IT System Development Portals colleagues in Munich. Oliver studied computer science (minor in business administration) at the University of Hamburg and brings comprehensive experience gained in software implementation projects in complex system environments, agile software development and DevOps. IT management consulting, digital transformation projects and the establishment and further development of SCRUM organizations and processes have been main subjects of his career in nearly 25 years of IT business.