29 Jan Why Corrective Maintenance Remains Vital to Field Service Success
In a recent article on SoftwareAdvice.com, “Why You Need Both Corrective and Predictive Maintenance,” Bruce Breeden, principal consultant and field service practice leader at Mobile Reach, shared some of the insight he attained over a 30-year career in field service management and enterprise asset management.
According to Breeden, whose experience runs across industries in field service operations, corrective maintenance and reactive services will always be necessary, no matter how sophisticated the predictive and preventative strategies field service organizations roll out. This also applies to the latest OT and IoT technologies that enable orgs to pull data directly from machines and equipment.
“Doing preventive maintenance and calibrations, or scheduled maintenance, is heavily related to the (equipment) that you’re working on,” Breeden said. “I can’t imagine any services business that doesn’t provide reactive services.”
Breeden also said a strong, mobile-first work order system that allows field techs to easily log and track the corrective tasks they perform remains critical. He used the everyday example of changing a light bulb.
“All the (maintenance) data captured shows how often I have to change that lightbulb. (Therefore), it may make sense to change that lightbulb while you’re there (on the job site) because you know it’s going to go out soon.”
According to Breeden, who in a previous role served as global business lead for an Oracle CRM/ERP system, the reason for a strong and flexible work order system is to capture all data critical to ensuring a better result in the future.
To enable this, the work order system should push and pull data to and from all of the applications that are critical to success (EAM, CRM, ERP, service platform). From this perspective, the organization’s CIO serves a vital role in ensuring that the proper software tools are in place and talking to each other.
This sentiment is echoed by Gartner in the report, Mapping a Route to Asset Management and Reliability: “For organizations to maximize equipment reliability, CIOs can provide a variety of systems for different circumstances, but all will depend on sustainable integration to the IoT and OT data collection, and the EAM systems used for execution.” According to Gartner, “CIOs must provide a roadmap to clarify the best route.”
To ensure that your field service strategy incorporates the correct ratio of preventative, predictive, and corrective maintenance, contact Mobile Reach today. We provide an array of consulting services that will help your company find the right mix based on the needs of the equipment, your service, and your customers.