I spent an hour today with the IFS person in charge of Quality Assurance for our products. It was a most pleasant, and interesting, conversation. I’ll share some of it with you. One of the basic points of understanding is: all software has bugs. Ours, Microsoft’s, SAP’s, the video game you picked up for your…
Ten years from now, will the equipment be contacting the engineers’ devices directly? In 1991 a national service manager with Du-Pont medical products approached us with a classic service problem. His service engineers were responsible for both break/fix service and for preventive maintenance service on their products. He was wrestling with this issue – if…
I’ve been around the service industry a long time, over 25 years. I have been able to see hundreds of service operations, servicing a wide, wide variety of products – blood analyzers, medical imaging equipment, overhead doors, coin counting machines, silicon wafer producing machines, copiers and many others. I am amazed and impressed at the…
Some of the problems in service are profound, some are trivial. Some can be attacked in a fun way. Several years ago, an IFS client that services hospital and lab equipment was looking for a way to grow revenues. Their U.S. Director of service came up with a clever idea that worked well and I’ll…
Having been in the business of providing software for service organizations for 25 years, I would say that all service organizations overlap business process for 50% to 70% of their activities. When the product doesn’t work, someone needs to do something: go there & fix it, or send the product back, or send a part…
