McKinley Elevator, Medivators and Elekta take step toward smarter field service connecting assets to the IoT.
ServiceMax, the leading provider of field service management solutions, today announced the inaugural round of customers to successfully deploy ServiceMax’s Connected Field Service (CFS).
Customers McKinley Elevator, Elekta and Medivators are among the first to implement the field service industry’s first complete Internet of Things (IoT) solution, connecting previously offline machines directly to technicians in the field.
The product, which was rolled out last January, pairs PTC’s ThingWorx IoT platform with ServiceMax’s mobile suite for iPad and laptops to deliver smarter, more agile service in the field. CFS seamlessly combines IoT machine data with field service delivery to provide live asset operational updates, monitoring, machine initiated alerts, connected diagnostics and contextual repair procedures, directly to service professionals on their mobile devices.
Since rolling out the program, customers are realizing the benefits of proactive field service delivery, including the ultimate goal of in some cases of fixing machines remotely before downtime ever occurs. So far, customers are reporting increases in first-time fix rates, better interpretation of machine alerts and improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
CFS features machine-initiated service requests which automates the creation of requests to improve response time to important issues. Access to real-time and historical sensor readings allow technicians to monitor equipment from afar, gather information and make sense of data to prevent downtime before a failure occurs. For longtime ServiceMax customer McKinley Elevator, this has allowed technicians to receive up-to-date machine-generated error codes to prevent down time, decreasing their average time to repair.
“The combination of PTC and ServiceMax is changing the conversation with customers. We are talking about data and how our insights allow us to deliver a previously unreachable level of safety and service,” said Kevin Rusin, CFO of McKinley Elevator. “With that information, we can complete the proactive data-service loop and act on machine-generated error codes with the right technician at the right time. We fully expect that our average time to resolution will drop dramatically with connected customers as we will be eliminating downtime in many instances by resolving issues prior to the equipment actually failing.”
“Connecting our assets directly to the devices in our technicians’ pockets has the ability to transform the way we deliver service to our global customer base,” said Daniel Kingham, Remote Services Program Director of Elekta. “So far we have seen over 600 preventative actions carried out and more than two hours of clinical downtime avoided per prediction. With CFS we will be able to automate and integrate the workflow, increasing these numbers significantly and therefore benefiting our customers’ with more efficient proactive service.”
The Connected Field Service solution, meanwhile, will help Medivators shift to a proactive service model by enabling proactive diagnostic and remote service.
Amos Schneller, VP of Global Service and Technical support at Medivators, said:
“For 78 percent of our calls, we can now use remote access to solve technical issues. We can receive alerts about problems even before customers know there’s an issue. We used to rely on primitive, slow tools for remote access. But in medicine, speed is crucial.”
The implementation of CFS allows organizations to recognize untapped benefits of field service and gives them the ability to upsell their products. CFS is one step in a series of new technology innovations to elevate proactive service delivery, and using this data has the potential to fundamentally change the way service is delivered.
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