Mobile Field Service Automation Generates Efficient Operations And Substantial Cost Savings
BT Industries, a member of the Toyota Industries Corporation of Japan, is the world’s leading warehouse truck manufacturer.
- Alliance partner
- Microsoft
- Solution
- Application Development
- Customer Relationship Management
- Infrastructure Services
To increase efficiency and decrease costs for its field service engineers the company wanted to modernise its paper-based system by taking advantage of advancing mobile technology.
Capgemini developed a system of field service automation that allowed service engineers to work both online and offline on state-of-the-art PDA equipment that seamlessly linked to BT Industries’ ERP solution. This would ultimately lead to increased efficiency and substantial cost savings.
Situation
BT Industries is the world’s leading manufacturer of warehouse trucks and has been in the industry for over 50 years. It developed the hand pallet truck and the EUR pallet, the standardised load carrier built jointly by BT Industries and the Swedish State Railways at the end of the 1940s. The company also invented the hydraulic pallet truck, which, together with the pallet, soon attracted international interest and in 1955 the first electric trucks were launched establishing a nationwide service organisation in the process.
Throughout its history BT Industries has rapidly expanded and following a number of acquisitions the company today has around 8,000 employees and sales of almost US$1.3 billion, which represents a 20% world market share. BT Industries is a member of Toyota Industries Corporation of Japan, with seven truck manufacturing plants in Sweden, the USA, Canada and Italy. BT Industries’ products are marketed throughout the world and are represented in over 70 countries where customers consist of major international companies in logistics-intensive industries. The groups operations are divided into three geographic business areas: BT Europe, BT Raymond (USA) and BT International.
In Western Europe, BT has wholly owned sales and service companies in most EU countries, including Sweden, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux countries. Customers are mainly companies and chains with large central warehouses and distribution hubs. In Eastern Europe, BT’s wholly owned MHC has subsidiaries in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States.
The problem for BT Industries was that it’s service engineers out in the field were still operating on a manual, paper-based system that was time consuming, costly and prone to errors. After finishing a pre-assigned task the service engineers would fill out a paper form and send it to the office, but it would typically take up to two weeks after the work had been completed to reach the office. This presented delays in invoicing and would often arrive with vital information missing. BT Industries approached Capgemini to assess how they could improve the quality and economic aspects of the process in the form of a mobile solution.
Solution
BT Industries’ service engineers in Europe carry out some 5,000 assignments a day in total. Each engineer is to be equipped with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which, through mobile technology developed by Capgemini, can communicate with the company’s ERP solution from Intentia known as Movex.
Having signed system development agreements with Capgemini and Intentia, BT Industries has permitted Capgemini to develop software for the PDAs and, together with Intentia, be responsible for the integration with Movex.
The first phase of the project, which began in Autumn 2001, involved business process reengineering whereby Capgemini completed an assessment of all the service processes that BT Industries was using. The assessment made it possible for the company to create better service processes by adopting PDAs as the enabler.
Phase two was to develop the technical architecture that would integrate the PDAs with the Movex ERP system. Microsoft technology was chosen as the solution architecture due to its agile, robust and secure nature. The architecture is mainly based on Windows 2000 Server, SQL Server, IIS, MSMQ and Pocket PC.
Just five months after the first phase had begun, BT Industries carried out pilot tests in Sweden, Belgium and the UK using the Compaq iPAQ Pocket PC and PDAs of other leading suppliers. The solution will be put into full-scale operation during 2002 so that it can be used by 1,500 of BT Industries’ service engineers throughout Europe. The system has completely replaced the previous processes that saw 1.2 million work orders annually sent on paper to the administrative office to be fed into BT Industries’ business system.
BT’s mobile ERP application will offer extensive functionality. It will enable technicians to use
PDAs to plan their workdays, create, receive and report service orders and assignments, order spare parts, review service contracts, and access extensive data about service objects and customers. It will also include advanced online billing, where customers can approve invoices directly from the PDA using electronic signatures.
Mobile ERP clients can be designed to operate either in an online or offline mode, which means that users, via GSM or GPRS-based networks, will be able to either communicate directly with the ERP platform in real time, or work on their own and then synchronize data afterwards.
The solution represents one of the first, and largest, deployments of mobile technology in the field service arena, says BT Industries’ Account Manager at Capgemini, Per Lundquist. “By using mobile technology BT Industries has changed its field service process dramatically. They have considerably reduced back-office overheads and are empowering their service engineers by integrating their PDAs with their back-end system.”
Benefits
BT Industries estimates that a fully developed system will save 2.5 million euros a year through increased efficiency and production. Engineers always have access to critical systems and information, whilst the new solution reduces any problems that might occur with network connectivity through its offline capabilities.
The advantages of the offline mode where the service engineers synchronize their PDAs a few times per day instead of always being online are clear. For example, the PDA allows the engineers to work offline on their service inventories. When the service assignment has been completed the engineer can easily upload the information to the ERP system and at the same time receive downloads from the system with new assignments. The solution provides access to all necessary information through the PDA, thus allowing the service engineer to carry out assignments independent of external factors.
”The implementation of mobile technology will have major implications for our customer service operations. Information technology and our ERP framework are the enabling factors, but the true key to success here is the integration of technology, people and business processes,” says Jonas Tornerefelt, Vice President of Service Markets at BT Europe.