I’ve told anybody who will listen that the number one, most screwed up part of any service organization is parts! Nobody builds something and thinks that it will break or need repair so naturally the availability of parts and parts systems are always an afterthought. When somebody does think about parts up front it is usually a utopian process that every customer knows exactly what’s wrong with their equipment and we can provide the correct part every time. The tech simply shows up dressed like a Good Humor man and swaps out the bad for the good and we’re off to the races. What color is the sky in their world?
The reality is that your customer calls and says ‘it’s broke.’ That’s descriptive. I know so much from that interaction I probably can fix it with my mental powers. Bingo! All fixed. Go on about your business. Again, I’d like to visit that planet someday soon. It’s just not rooted in reality and our customers, staff and reputation suffer as a result. And this problem grows exponentially if your business expanded through mergers and/or acquisitions. More fun for all.
What is the solution you may ask? If I knew that I’d be a multi bazzilionaire. I’m just a blogger and my particular model didn’t come equipped with the clairvoyance module. Maybe I can upgrade sometime in the future, we’ll see.
I do however have some advice for you. Ask some questions. Don’t just ask procurement or your management team. Ask the dudes that are installing the parts and the dispatchers scheduling them. You will be shocked at the answers you hear, I guarantee it. This is the reality of your mobile workers. If a system doesn’t support what I need to do to get the job done I will create one that does.
I worked with a customer that had a geographically distributed workforce. I went in to help them mobilize their field service organization. The goal was to automate the paper processes that the techs were dealing with and improve the overall effectiveness of their field organization. I asked for the workshop to include several of their actual field techs and I didn’t want them to stack the deck with Pollyanna’s. I specifically asked for at least one of their most “difficult” techs to work with. This is usually suicidal but in this case there was a method to my madness. I needed to understand this person’s perspective as well as the Pollyanna’s to get a true feel for their situation.
We assembled in a room, managers, techs, procurement people, a dispatcher, and the executive sponsor. As we went around and introduced ourselves I asked them to tell me why they thought they were there. When we got to the difficult tech he said his name was Mr. Difficult (obviously), that he had worked there for 17 years and thought he was there to see what Corporate was going to ram down his throat next. You have to love straight shooters. There was a bit of awkwardness in the room but being the outsider I jumped in and told him he was actually there to help design the next system he would be using. I don’t think he believed me.
After intros I made my standard statements about leaving titles at the door and needing everybody’s input to make this successful and then I dropped my typical example of things we’ve seen troubles with in the past with other customers and sighted Parts. Mr. Sponsor jumped to his feet and proclaimed that they have “absolutely no problems with parts and our parts process always works perfectly.” I have this unwritten rule in my head that says when someone uses absolute terms like always or never they are usually missing the big picture. At the sponsors statement Mr. Difficult’s posture stiffened, his arms crossed and his lips tightened. I couldn’t help myself.
“Mr. Difficult” I said. “It appears you don’t completely agree with Mr. Sponsor’s assessment. Can you share your thoughts?” What followed was like the Who’s on First comedy bit from Abbott and Costello. He violently disagreed and had examples to back it up, the other techs in the room piled on with more examples and the dispatcher even got in on the game. Techs calling each other to exchange parts in parking lots, too much inventory of what they didn’t need in their trucks, the parts they needed requiring overnight shipping, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! Mr. Sponsor was stunned. He actually thought this was one area of his business that was working like a well oiled machine. Somebody has to pay!
He turned to Mr. Procurement and went after him with both barrels. “Why is this process so screwed up?” he demanded. Mr. Procurement explained. “We had to turn off the auto-replenishment feature because the parts system software was sending 10 items to each tech every time they used a single part, whether they needed them or not.” Tech #2 jumped in and said, “And there’s no way to return inventory that isn’t in your truck stock so you are paying for a self storage unit for me to store all the stuff I can’t use because my wife got sick of it filling our garage.” The fun was just beginning.
Mr. Sponsor was suitably outraged and demanded Mr. Procurement explain why this hadn’t been fixed and in what can only be described as poetic justice Mr. Procurement replied calmly, “Because I sent you a change order to get the software fixed and you denied it.” You could hear crickets chirping outside at that point it was so quiet. Mr. Sponsor slumped down in his chair and mumbled, “But nobody told me what the change order was for…” Did he ask? He was in enough pain so I didn’t push the issue.
What ended up happening as a result of that exchange was the first open conversation between procurement and field operations about how best to manage inventory to meet the requirements for both teams. Nobody had ever seen a need for this conversation in the past so we used the mobility project as the excuse to look at it and get them to fix it. Their baby was ugly and ignoring it only made it worse. The solution was to make some minor changes to the systems and the majority of the issues were fixed.
And as for the self storage unit, Mr. Procurement suggested they have an amnesty day and allow the techs to return any parts that were lying around with no questions asked. The result was $1.1 million in “ghost inventory” coming back to the warehouse. I sure hope your problems aren’t that big but if you don’t ask…
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Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Business Process, Field Service, Mobile Futures Today
