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The truth is that the average field service technician is only 50% productive. This is so of even the most successful field service contractors. "That means that half the technician's time is spent traveling from one job to the next, stopping at supply houses to pick up parts, going on vacation, attending training sessions, and performing other activities not billed to the customer," says Anthony Gemma, president of Gem Plumbing & Heating of Lincoln, R.I.

Gemma's company is the largest plumbing and heating contractor in Rhode Island, with over 300 employees and 110 trucks. In addition to plumbing and heating, its mobile service technicians provide air conditioning and drain cleaning services from its new headquarters near Providence.

Gemma is shooting for productivity of 75% to 80%, and he intends to achieve that goal through a three-pronged automation program that Gem is in the process of implementing. The success of Gem's program will hinge on tying inventory management, dispatching, and customer interaction into a single seamless process. That part of the implementation is still ongoing.

Three Not-So-Easy Pieces

"We decided to automate within the last five years or so," Gemma explains. "We just moved into a new facility, and now all of the automation is being deployed."

The procurement and inventory management piece of the automation process began four and a half months ago. At that time, Gem outsourced its procurement activities to Ferguson Integrated Supply, a subsidiary of Ferguson Enterprises Inc., a $7 billion building supply company based in Newport News, Va. Ferguson manages Gem's inventory with a four-person on-site team and provides Gem with proprietary supply chain integration and inventory management systems that accommodate just-in-time delivery of parts and materials.

The second piece of the process began about a year and a half ago and involves the use of SuccessWare's contract management system. This software helps call center personnel prioritize service calls and performs a host of accounting and reporting functions.

For the final piece, Gem is working with a company called Vettro, which provides a communications architecture that will interact with SuccessWare to provide information and functionality to remote technicians over mobile phones and deliver real-time data back to the company's accounting and dispatch systems. Vettro will also provide connectivity between the truck and Ferguson, providing the latter with real-time inventory information that it will use to restock the trucks.

Procurement and Inventory Management

Before Ferguson started managing inventory for Gem, the plumbing and heating company had to procure stock from multiple vendors. Items were often out of stock, and drivers had to take side trips to the supply houses to pick up parts for jobs.

Gem and Ferguson worked for two years to develop an automatic truck replenishment program, which went live three and a half months ago. Gemma was attracted to Ferguson because of its track record in managing just-in-time procurement and inventory for Fortune 100 companies, such as Motorola and General Motors, as well as other leading companies in aerospace, medicine, power generation, and semiconductors.

"We've contracted with Ferguson Integrated Supply to procure everything we need, from toilet paper to paper clips to plumbing materials to automotive supplies," Gemma explains.

Ferguson scours local suppliers for the lowest prices on materials and parts. Gem stocks 350,000 stock-keeping units in its warehouse, while each truck carries between 3,000 and 6,000 items. Gem's trucks are standardized so that each stocks every part in the same place. Each part, whether on board or in the warehouse, has been bar coded by Ferguson.

Prioritizing Service Calls

Ferguson's procurement and inventory transactions are uploaded into SuccessWare. This data lets the software calculate job costs and profitability so that Gem dispatchers can prioritize service calls.

Incoming calls are assigned one of five priority levels by SuccessWare, based on the type of call and the available technicians. "Prioritization enables us to take the most profitable calls available when we're over capacity," says Gemma. "If we can't get to all of them, we give priority to existing customers and turn away the least profitable jobs."

SuccessWare provides its product to Gem through a remote application service provider, which lets Gem run the software from any location with Internet access. The system is also available by way of a local area network installation.

SuccessWare also automates invoicing, which enables users to deploy office personnel more efficiently, according to the company's director of sales and marketing, Chris Di Re. In addition, the system provides customer-history information, which can be used to target sales. "The user can call customers to make repairs that have been recommended but not yet ordered," explains Di Re.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:37 AM