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According to a new research report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight, the market for lone worker protection solutions and services in Europe and North America is forecasted to grow from €110 million in 2017, to reach more than €260 million in 2022.

The number of users of dedicated lone worker safety devices based on GPS and cellular technology on the European market is estimated to grow from 500,000 users in 2017 to reach 1.1 million users at the end of 2022. In North America, the number of such users is estimated to grow from 155,000 in 2017, to reach 375,000 at the end of 2022. In Europe, app-based solutions are today estimated to account for around 20 percent of all solutions, while in North America more than 40 percent of the solutions are based on apps for smartphones and tablets. In both regions, app-based solutions are forecasted to account for an increasing share of lone worker safety solutions in the coming years.  

The lone worker safety market is led by a handful of specialist companies based mainly in the UK and Canada, where legislation specifically addressing the safety of lone workers has fostered growth. SoloProtect and Send For Help Group has grown to become two of the world’s largest providers of lone worker safety solutions and services. Send For Help Group mainly serves the UK market and operates under the three subsidiaries Peoplesafe, Skyguard and Guardian24. SoloProtect is active in the US, Canada and other parts of Europe in addition to its main UK market. Both SoloProtect and Send For Help Group, also operate their own alarm receiving centre (ARC). Additional companies with notable market shares in the UK include Reliance High-Tech and Safe Apps. In Canada, the main providers of safety devices and services for lone workers are Blackline Safety, Tsunami Solutions and Aware360. Blackline Safety has been known for developing technologically advanced safety devices for lone workers using both cellular and satellite communications technology.

The market drivers for lone worker safety solutions include occupational safety regulations, increasing employee insurance costs and higher awareness of risks associated with lone working. The number of individuals working alone is also expected to grow as businesses strive for increased efficiency. A job previously performed by two persons or more is now being done by a single worker. “Traditionally, lone workers exposed to the highest social or environmental risks have been found in industries such as security and protective services, social care, field service maintenance and in heavy industries such as oil & gas and construction”, says Martin Bäckman, IoT Analyst at Berg Insight. He adds that companies in other industries are now also starting to see the benefits of these services. “There is now an increasing demand for lone worker safety services from employees in retail, financial services, education and more, which fuels market growth”, concludes Mr. Bäckman. 

Download report brochure: People Monitoring and Safety Solutions

Want to know more? Check out our recent podcast featuring Chris Proctor from Oneserve and Mark Glover Deputy Editor at Field Service News, discussing the role IoT can play in lone worker safety...

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Key findings:

• 1 in 4 businesses struggle to adapt and thrive from technology disruption.
• 36.9% of companies view technology disruption as an opportunity to improve and grow as a business.
• In order to stay ahead of the competition, 50.4% of businesses reported having a proactive ‘opportunity-minded’ approach to new and emerging technologies.
• Only 12% of businesses voiced their concerns of their ability to adapt to digital advancements over the next three years, despite 23.4% rating themselves as Digital Laggards.

Technology is often thought about in terms of physical devices that are electrical or digital. When in fact, technology encompasses far more than simply tangible objects. New and emerging technologies often impact the value of existing models and services, resulting in digital disruption, which leads to many companies re-evaluating and transforming.

Technology disruption is defined as ‘technology that displaces an established technology and shakes up the industry or creates a completely new industry’.

There is currently a high-stakes global game of digital disruption, fuelled by the latest wave of technological advances spurred by A.I and data analytics. As a result, business models within industry sectors are inevitably changing. Despite the fact 19.3% of companies feel that the pace of technological change has made them significantly more competitive in the past three years, a large majority of companies are still struggling to keep up with this change.

As a result, SavoyStewart.co.uk sought to identify whether businesses view technology disruption as an opportunity or threat, though an analysis of the latest research conducted by Futurum*.

Interestingly, it was discovered that 1 in 4 businesses still struggle to keep up with the times and thrive from digital disruption. Despite this, whilst weighing up the opportunity vs. threat of technological disruption, 39.6% of businesses feel that it provides them with new opportunities to improve and grow as a company.

Savoy Stewart determined this was down to the companies approach to technology adaption, with 24.4% surprisingly, admitting to having no approach. Positively, 50.4% of businesses reported to have a proactive ‘opportunity-minded’ approach, ensuring they remain competitive and up to date.

With 25.1% of business seemingly adopting a passive ‘wait and see’ approach, it is unsurprising that 30.7% of companies felt the impact of technological change over the past three years has made them less competitive.

The window of opportunity to gain competitive advantage generally falls inside a window of three years. It is, therefore, critical for business leaders to understand the value of technologically proactive leadership and operational agility. The faster a company can use technology disruption to their advantage, the more likely it is to surge ahead of its competitors.

Surprisingly, whilst 29.5% of companies stated they feel very excited about their ability to adapt over the next three years, only 18.3% rated themselves as ‘Digital Leaders’. These individuals are highly proactive and agile business leaders who are ahead in their strategic and operational anticipation of the technological change facing them and their organisation.

Thereafter, 35% of businesses feel somewhat optimistic about their ability to adapt. Which is not far off the 36.3% of companies that rated themselves to be ‘Digital Adopters’; easily adaptable and proactive in their approach to evolve with technology disruption.

Following suit, 23.4% are a little concerned about their ability to adapt over the next three years, indicating their company is adaptable but passive in their approach. Which is once again close in correlation to the amount of businesses that rated themselves to be ‘Digital Followers’ at 22%.

Lastly, 12% of businesses stated they are very worried about their ability to adapt to technological change. Which is interesting considering almost double (23.4%), rated themselves to be ‘Digital Laggards’.

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Traditionally at this time of year, leading industry experts and analysts like to give their views and opinions on what they see as the leading technology trends for the forthcoming year.

For the first time ever, global business intelligence and research firm AMPLYFI has applied its leading AI-based technology, DataVoyant, to identify and statistically quantify mega technology trends out to 2050 across a range of industries and sectors. In finding, harvesting, and reading over 1,000,000 open-source documents, such as academic papers, patents, journals, news items and government white papers, located on both the Surface and the Deep Web, the machine-driven analysis projects likely future trends and timescales to next expected peaks in technologies’ maturities. 

Of the 2,639 broad themes identified, the top mega tech trends and where they are likely to really start impacting our everyday lives are readily identified. Top technologies to watch out for in 2019 are, unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and distributed ledger technologies. Looking beyond this, the realms of energy, mobility, medicine, and our domestic lives appear strong candidates for technology-led disruption on multiple fronts.

Projected Mega Tech Trends 

The process of generating the projections required DataVoyant’s proprietary AI algorithms to first identify key technologies and quantify their relevance based on a number of factors, including frequency, inter-connectivity to related topics, and importance within each document that they feature in. Extracting date stamps from websites and from within documents, the machine then automatically generated historic trends for each technology. From here, deep learning algorithms enabled the machine to learn the “historic context” i.e. the changing interconnectedness and dependencies across hundreds of thousands of variables to create a basis to project forward into the future.

Chris Ganje, CEO and co-founder of AMPLYFI, said: “The power of AI to capture, analyse, and make sense of huge datasets is enabling levels of insight that were previously impossible under traditional business intelligence and research techniques. Our analysis of mega tech trends is just one example of where AI can either affirm or challenge the opinions and perceived wisdom of a minority of often highly influential commentators. The richness and detail lying behind the results allow us to spot early-stage convergence between innovative technologies and business models, as well as track the development of enabling technologies that will ultimately underpin future phenomena such as Smart Cities. Crucially, the machine is able to simultaneously monitor all of this globally, continuously tracking whether context changes sufficiently to materially alter its projections.” 

“Where the deployment or commercial application of technologies is likely to be hampered by regulatory hurdles or public opinion, such as home deliveries by drones or selective human gene editing, AMPLYFI’s DataVoyant technology enables us to monitor developments in these fields globally too. Conversely, it enables us to monitor where regulation is evolving to select and incentivise specific technologies.”

 “In a world where there are more questions than answers, we believe it is better to base business decisions from a position of informed knowledge than from mere opinion. AMPLYFI’s business intelligence platforms, driven by AI and machine learning technology, enable our clients to unlock the entire internet for themselves, both the Surface and Deep Web, in order to generate insights that their competitors are not seeing and to provide quantifiable windows into the future.”

AMPLYFI’s unique DataVoyant platform uses cutting-edge technology to locate, harvest, and analyse data from the Surface and Deep Web held across academic papers, patents, government reports, databases, journals, or news items, to find early warning signals and quantify trends that can help businesses make smarter, faster decisions.

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If you enjoyed this content and would like to more about Cognito iQ and the solutions the provide to field service companies visit their website @ www.cognitoiq.com.

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Passive RFIDs has a competitive edge over active RFID but technological advancements are helping to close the gap, finds Frost & Sullivan

The growth of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and cloud have given a huge boost to the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in Manufacturing 4.0. The interconnectedness of devices has resulted in massive volumes of RFID data that needs to be managed and analyzed, prompting RFID manufacturers to develop high-memory tags that can hold more information, software platforms with a business intelligence layer, as well as cloud-based solutions.

"Due to the rising need for resource and cost efficiency, manufacturers are demanding complete visibility and adopting RFID solutions that aid the real-time location tracking and monitoring of their assets, business processes, and personnel,” said Nandini Bhattacharya Industry Manager for Measurement & Instrumentation at Frost & Sullivan. "Passive RFID has experienced high-volume deployments in the past and will continue to grow, especially in the ultra-high frequency segment, while active RFID, although a smaller market, has potential in real-time location system (RTLS) applications."

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, RFID in Global Manufacturing 4.0 Market, Forecast to 2025, focuses on the trends, challenges, and factors driving the market sectors of tags, readers, and software and services. It provides product revenue and units forecasts, country-wise breakdown of each region, competitive analyses, and a list of key market participants, along with their respective market shares. The study also offers participants deep business intelligence to accelerate growth in a fast-paced market.

For further information on this analysis, please visit: frost.ly/32p 

"As the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an active RFID system is prohibitive, small and medium enterprises opt for the more affordable passive RFID solutions," noted Bhattacharya. "Active RFID manufacturers need to focus on the standardization of active 433 MHz RFID to drive its growth. The rising ubiquity of ultra wide band (UWB) and Bluetooth low energy (BLE) RTLS solutions will give the solution an added boost."

Overall, the growing demands for automation and digitization are creating considerable growth opportunities for RFID vendors that:

• Offer solutions that can be easily integrated into the existing manufacturing infrastructure and can enable IoT connectivity.
• Provide precise and accurate RTLS solutions at competitive prices.
• Develop devices with faster read rate, ability to read more number of tags in a single read as well as highly sensitive antenna, compatible form factors, and increased mobility.
• Gauge customers’ requirements and re-structure their business models accordingly.

RFID in Global Manufacturing 4.0 Market, Forecast to 2025 is part of Frost & Sullivan’s global Mechanical Power Transmission Growth Partnership Service program.

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A year into his tenure heading-up ServiceMax Scott Berg is in a positive mood. Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover went to meet the CEO to discuss life after GE’s acquisition, Brexit and why IoT still has more to offer...

Note: This interview was held prior to the announcement of Silver Lake's acquisition of a majority stake within ServiceMax which sees GE to continue as a minority investor. Find out more about the acquisition here 

Ahead of my interview with Scott I go online to read a handful of the firm’s customer case-studies. I browse with the intention of spotting a pattern, a pool of similar companies that can give me handle on the ServiceMax success story. Of course, the firm have always operated in diverse sectors: aviation; food production and pharmaceuticals to name a few.

As I delve further the specialism of the companies narrow into impressive and exciting-sounding niches: centrifugal pumps manufacturers; architectural coating companies; bio-analytical measurement system providers all extolling the values of ServiceMax’s solutions. With this in mind, I start by asking Scott how he keeps a handle on this array of industries, a forest of complex verticals. “You’re talking about large workforces that have scheduling needs at a real primitive level who have a real despatch and scheduling element,” Scott tells me in a meeting room at GE’s London offices.

“I think that unifies all those vertical industries for us. At the bottom of that, for the most part, there is either a complex piece of equipment and it’s really that machine or that piece of equipment that we that’s at the centre of what we do. “We tend to provide solutions for those with complex asset types of services which could be a wind turbine or a power plant, a centrifuge, or a brain-surgery machine in a hospital. When you look at it that way, there’s a lot of similarity across them.”

It will be a year this January since Scott took up the post as CEO of ServiceMax coinciding with GE’s acquisition of the firm. Despite being part of a multi-national conglomerate, a company who this ranked 18 in this Fortune 500, has the technician-focused ethos remained “This is a company that cares quite a bit about assets and equipment and machinery and engineers,” Scott says.

“I think there’s something close to 25,000 employed service engineers. There’s a real love and affinity which has been good and benefitted us.” Since the acquisition, ServiceMax have gained traction beyond Europe in countries where previously it had been difficult to get a footprint. Of course, investment has helped but Scott suggests GE’s global respect has also been a factor. “In the past 12 months we’ve had a number of customers in the Middle East fuelled by the positive brand and reputation of GE in that part of the world.”

"This is a company that cares quite a bit about assets and equipment and machinery and engineers..."

Europe though remains a strong area for the outfit with clients spanning the continent. On the day I meet Scott, Britain is reacting to Theresa May’s draft Brexit proposal, and my mobile buzzed and bleeped with news notifications as I made the train journey down.

The process of Britain’s extraction from the European Union has been fraught and complex with political commentators and business leaders offering various doomsday scenarios if negotiations falter. I ask Scott what effect, if any, Brexit could have on its European footprint? “I don’t want to get political and be on one side or the other and I can’t say I fully understand it,” he says wisely, “but there’s a demand out there for global operation in the world’s largest corporations and people are going to have to get through trade barriers and deal with the consumer on a worldwide basis regardless.”

We’re both happy to swerve further discussion on Brexit so I steer back to where it all began for Scott, in pharmaceuticals at Eli Lilly and Dendrite in the early 90s where he held Business Director and Senior Director roles respectively. A role at Connect offered a peak into the field service sector dealing with territory management systems, introducing large volumes of laptops into white-collar knowledge workers. “I had an early glimpse of the mobile workforce and what that was going to look like,” he recalls. At the time, California was the focal point of US software development. Fuelled by a growing interest in technology, Scott, originally from New Jersey headed to “chase the dream”. Fast forwarding then to 2009 and Scott is interviewing at ServiceMax.

As he plotted his experience, he was able to align his previous roles to the field service sector. “Even as I was about to join the company,” he says with a smile, “I was remembering all the things – even from pharmaceuticals – about remote working and parts ordering. We would deploy thousands of laptops to a sales team and none of those laptops had the means to service them, repair them, return then, ship them and prep them. Back in those days we had to run a full-on field sales operation because how else would 2,000 reps get what they needed.

“I had no idea how pertinent that would end up being first-hand experience of aftermarket or a parts operation where frankly where we trying to deliver a software solution.”

We work out that “back then” was 35 years ago and we both wince slightly at the speed of time passing. “My daughter calls me old,” Scott, 50, jokes. Still, the last four decades have seen a revolution in technology and software advances; the advent of the internet underpinning most applications. I ask Scott, given his experience, if he thinks the world wide web was a watershed moment, or perhaps something else? “I think the big change that I’ve seen for has been mobile,” he offers.

"The internet is not as ‘everywhere’ as people believe. It’s blocked in hospitals and airports. It’s enhanced by smart-mobile devices that have these rich capabilities but we also have to deal with the reality that they will sometimes lose connectivity..."

“Of course, this would be nowhere without the internet but going from luggable, yet heavy and fragile laptops to really smart affordable mobile devices; I think that’s a big deal.” And what about the internet? “ It’s been a bit of a double-edged sword,” he says. The internet is not as ‘everywhere’ as people believe. It’s blocked in hospitals and airports. It’s enhanced by smart-mobile devices that have these rich capabilities but we also have to deal with the reality that they will sometimes lose connectivity.

“We acknowledge the mobile workforce and the internet connectivity and getting data to people; we acknowledge the mobile devices and how important they’ll be but the only way to really do this properly is to think about that device and software operating in a connected and dis-connected way,” he pauses. “It’s a balance of the two. Relying on connectivity, the Internet of Things (IoT) goes beyond laptops, smartphones and tablets. Monitoring our heating and air-conditioning and even dimming our lights, its potential impact across heavy industry is huge."

In a previous interview with Field Service News’ Scott said that IoT had been an “unfulfilled promise”. Does he stick by the statement? “I think what needs to happen now, and this is where the real value will come from IoT,” he says recalling the earlier Interview.

“I think what needs to happen now, and where the real value will come from IoT, is when input from a machine can be fed into more predictive models using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning. Only then we will get truly predictive services, and only then will you get a learning model rather than an alert system.” He elaborates further: “Part of the early benefits for our customer base have been error logs and early warning systems. Now, what we offer for field service management and asset performance management can be through IoT and the predictive side; and then measure whether or not that had the impact that was wanted.”

"I think the version of autonomy that applies to complex services is a smarter machine that asks for help before it needs it..."

So, not only pre-empting but learning from pre-empting? “Exactly,” he affirms.

“We talk a lot about the closed-loop mentality; where you’re predictive about the maintenance instruction, then you capture the service that was actually executed then feed that back and now the model gets smarter over time.”

Despite the speed in which technology is progressing Scott believes the technical role of the engineer will remain.

He’s wise and experienced enough however, to know it is changing.

The asset, assisted by IoT and Machine Learning, will come to complement the technician. He references the term autonomous, suggesting – perhaps correctly – that people only associate it with self-driving cars. “I think the version of autonomy that applies to complex services is a smarter machine that asks for help before it needs it, a smarter machine that provides realtime data to advise the technician,” he says.

While IoT is certainly changing the field service marketplace, the hype around the technology is bringing a side-effect, a bi-product that requires effort for an end-user to control: data, reams of data. Scott is sympathetic towards clients who find themselves drowning in error-codes.

He tells me about a client he met the previous day - a provider of cancer surgery equipment.

“Every morning,” he says shaking his head, “the technician woke to an email reporting 2,000 potential error codes. And it’s all on this technician to decide what’s meaningful and what’s not. Sure, it’s a good IoT application that’s come up with 2,000 codes, but which one actually matters?”

The issue of data-overload affirms Scott’s earlier point, that IoT needs to be reined in by a strong predictive model that can filter the relevant information.

“That’s where things are really advancing now,” Scott affirms.

“To go from IoT spewing data at people, to layering a predictive model on that to advise and lead a technician’s actions, delivered through a smart mobile device that can present the relevant information.”

All of this ultimately adds up to efficiency, a key factor for those organisations whose business models are asset-heavy; the wind turbine or nuclear reactor for example. The effect of down-time across an assembly line, for even a short period can have serious financial consequences.

“They can’t afford for it to be down,” Scott explains, “and you can’t just call anyone to come and fix it. This isn’t a Google or a Yelp search to get someone with credentials to climb 300ft and fix a wind turbine.”

"The effect of down-time across an assembly line, for even a short period can have serious financial consequences..."

With good timing, a week before our meeting, a GE press release lands in my in-box announcing the launch of PreDix ServiceMax Asset Service Management software aimed squarely at these heavy-asset sectors. I’m drawn to the safety and compliance element of the software where the solution creates documentation for workers to check the correct Personal Protective Equipment is fitted.

“Even a simple checklist at the start of each technician’s day that asks if you are equipped with the right boots, or hard-hat or eye wear; just the reminder can contribute to a reduction in safety incidents,” Scott says.

Importantly, signed employee safety and maintenance documentation creates evidence of compliance. Scott outlines the process: “It [the documentation) shows that every technician, that morning acknowledged that safety procedure and that instruction, the documentation can prove it occurred. Along with the maintenance documents, it shows that everything that needed to get done was done.”

Checklist management has been a focus at ServiceMax. 

The firm have produced capabilities around form-data capture, the uploading and capture of photograph as well as video; all feeding into the battle against inefficiency. To make this point Scott cites describes wind-turbine maintenance, which to take place, a technician must climb 300ft, a journey that can take several hours.

“Imagine the tremendous inefficiency if you weren’t perfectly ready with everything you needed when you got up there. “You don’t want to get all the way and not have the right bulb,” he says, only half-smiling. You have to be perfectly ready to execute because you’re about to spend four hours getting to a destination.”

I wrap up the interview by asking Scott what inspires him to do what he does?

He lists the variety of industries that they serve, clearly enjoying the different experiences this brings.

However, he finishes – unsurprisingly, as is the ServiceMax ethos – by bringing it back to the engineer.

“I think the field-service technician is an underserved, individual skill,” he says. So, perhaps serving, literally, millions of technicians is part of what drives me.”

Scott Berg is CEO of ServiceMax

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Frost & Sullivan will host an interactive Growth Innovation and Leadership (GIL) briefing highlighting creative destruction and expansion of traditional business models.

Frost & Sullivan's Industrial team will host a live, complimentary GIL briefing, “The Paradigm of Digital Industries and Growth Opportunities - Creative Destruction and Expansion of Traditional Business Models” on Wednesday, January 30, 2019, at 8:00 AM EST (1 PM GMT). The interactive briefing will be hosted by Ram Ramasamy, Industry Director, Automation and IIoT at Frost & Sullivan. The briefing will help to identify the best path forward through digital chaos and avoid common pitfalls that many in the industry have experienced.

For more information and to register for the webinar, please visit: http://frost.ly/2zt

“Ageing workforce and rising complexity in technologies is driving a widening consumption gap between data extraction and value-creation. This is driving customers to adopt smart digital offerings that will augment the available workforce and drive more from less,” said Ramasamy. “Further, as customers focus on core activities – we predict the emergence of industrial subscription economy.  A case in point: Customers will shed ownership of assets and shift to asset subscribership.”

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The Field Service Podcast returns for series three with a brand new host Mark Glover who speaks to Oneserve's CEO Chris Proctor. 

in this edition of the podcast fieldservicenews.com Deputy Editor, Mark Glover talks to the ever insightful and engaging Chris Proctor, CEO with Oneserve where they discuss why robots won't be taking over field service operations (just yet) and how OK should no longer be good enough for field service companies that want to excel.

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Growth and revenue opportunities emerge from the advent of new business models, mergers & acquisition activity, finds Frost & Sullivan...Rebounding from a two-year slump, the non-destructive test (NDT) inspection services market is undergoing an overall transformation. The convergence of various technologies such as Big Data, predictive analytics, digital twin, cloud computing, and smart factories is enhancing growth opportunities in the market, giving rise to several new business models. Vendors are making concerted efforts to convert Big Data to smart data and shift the market from the traditional time-people business model to more proactive performance-based business models.

"Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based NDT capabilities are altering market structures and driving the transformation of traditional business models,” said Prem Shanmugam, Senior Consultant for Measurement & Instrumentation at Frost & Sullivan. "Automation companies are increasingly repositioning themselves as service providers, while sensorization and predictive analytics have enabled vendors to develop innovative business models."

Frost & Sullivan’s recent analysis, Global Non-destructive Testing Inspection Services Market, Forecast to 2022, identifies key growth opportunities while detailing the challenges and threats. The forecast period is from 2018 to 2022, with 2017 being the base year. It covers the technology segments of ultrasonic, radiography, electromagnetic, visual inspection, and penetrant test.

For further information on this analysis, please visit: http://frost.ly/30g 

"This evolving market ecosystem will encourage numerous mergers and acquisitions as NDT inspection service companies look to broaden their capabilities in areas such as online monitoring, robotics, and predictive analytics," noted Shanmugam. "The convergence of dimensional metrology with NDT applications will help create a competitive advantage for NDT vendors by allowing them to expand beyond their core capabilities. For instance, technology synergies will enable vendors to use 3D portable laser scanners to scan pipeline corrosion."

Another significant benefit of applying technologies such as connectivity, cloud, and advanced analytics is that it mitigates the challenge of a shrinking pool of experienced and qualified NDT technicians. There are additional revenue opportunities to be gained by leveraging cutting-edge technologies, such as:

• AI-powered industrial robots in inspection and material handling.
• Intelligent algorithms for processing huge amounts of data in real time.
• Drones to inspect components and repair damaged components in the wind energy sector. The results will be automatically analyzed using fuzzy logic and neural networks.
• Mechanical follow-up tools to ensure adherence to the structure of the actual part or new advanced technologies such as CT 3D X-rays.
• The combined synergies of NDT inspection services with online monitoring solutions similar to condition monitoring and other ICT and advanced analytics.

Global Non-destructive Testing Inspection Services Market, Forecast to 2022 is part of Frost & Sullivan’s global Test & Measurement Growth Partnership Service program.

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Simon Fahie, Managing Director - Global Technologies, at ByBox reflects on a busy final quarter for the year, what the big challenges for 2019 will be and how we can overcome them...

Judging by the packed conference halls I’ve seen across the world this quarter, I think it’s fair to say that Winter 2018 is ‘events season’ for the global field service industry.

I was among the thousands of professionals who travelled to attend flagship conferences – all connected by a ‘need to know’ the latest developments within our sector.

But, as I heard tales of pioneering innovations and technologies at, for example, exhibitions in the USA, and a user group event in the UK, I was struck that the processes behind our work are just as important as the technology which supports it.

Hearing about the increasing pressures and challenges affecting the field service supply chain, and the different ways organisations are seeking to address them, triggered a train of thought in my mind around the power of lean thinking.

The principles of Lean are clear. It’s a systematic way of checking every process to find and extinguish waste. By eradicating unnecessary spend, time and resources, organisations can focus on adding value to customers.

And this one methodology is so effective, it can be used equally well within a wide range of businesses, from office cleaning, to automotive manufacturing, or the delivery of complex highway schemes. All three of these tasks have been analysed, broken down into steps, designed and redesigned to be as Lean as possible.

For decades, service companies have seen the value in similarly systematically removing unnecessary delays, materials, labour and costs from their processes. And yet, as the events began to wrap up, it became obvious to me that Lean thinking could have played a part in the case studies I had presented, and the networking conversations I had enjoyed.

I heard over and over again that the pain points are there. For example, getting the right service part to the right place at the right time is so important that, ironically, some businesses seem wary of making strategic changes. We heard stories about excessive inventory or significant costs related to same-day distribution being left unchallenged because ‘it works’. We know from analysis carried out recently for one organisation that 65% of items sent to site using same-day transport were returned by the engineer as good stock.

It doesn’t take much effort to start finding waste in that process, but what are the seven types of waste in Lean, and how might field service industries start finding some waste to eliminate?

Based on my experience at 2018 field service events, here are some examples, and how our customers are going about eliminating them:

Transport: Unnecessary movement of people or parts between processes

We saw one company save 640,000 miles of driving by delivering parts to app lockers at service sites, instead of using dispersed forward stocking locations. (FSLs)

Inventory: Excess raw material or finished parts 

Another firm had more than £1 million-worth of duplicated stock sitting in repair engineers’ vans.

The company cut spend significantly, by storing items specifically required by each location in secure on-site lockers

Waiting: People or parts waiting for the next step of a process

45 minutes per day, per engineer – that was the average waiting time saved by one organisation when it replaced PUDO collections with public locker collections.

Motions: Unnecessary movement of people or parts within a process

In our experience, the most advanced firms enable engineers to order parts for direct delivery, using a mobile app. This eliminates the unnecessary and inefficient movement of thousands of parts to and from warehouses, and can even enable firms to remove entire FSLs from their supply chains.

Rework: Correction or repetition of a process 

Forward-thinking firms also use mobile apps to assign condition codes for parts which need to be returned. This allows items to be directly routed to repairers, rather than return to the warehouse for evaluation. We’ve seen this contribute to a 40% reduction in total inventory for some firms, as well as a reduction in processing resources.

Overproduction: producing sooner or in greater quantities than customer demand

We saw one corporation reduce duplicate inventory by consolidating a UK stock-holding into a European warehouse. Delivery lead times and customer service levels were maintained by exploiting scheduled flights, and pre-8am distribution to lockers.

Over processing: Processing beyond standard required

Implementing a dedicated delivery point at a secure site reduced same-day transportation costs by 80% for one customer. In this use case same-day delivery was only used to ensure early next day availability.

It’s important to remember that the benefits of Lean thinking go above and beyond reducing waste, and into adding value to customers. For example, eliminating unnecessary movements often reduces overall lead-times -which in turn reduces risks to SLA compliance. And reducing transportation waste further supports carbon reduction targets.

I don’t pretend to be an expert in Lean thinking, however, as we seek to meet ever tighter service level requirements while simultaneously reducing costs these examples serve as reminders that there is plenty of waste to find if we go looking for it.

Simon Fahie is Managing Director, Global Technologies for ByBox

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