Chapter 2 Literature review
2.1 Introduction:
The purpose of this literature review is to assess methods which can optimize the performance of the Field Engineer of a large renal company. By assessing the different systems and processes being adopted by organisations we can then recommend changes to practices of the Large Renal Company so as to optimize its operation. The literature will assess areas such as route planning, training and development; inventory/stock level requirements along with available software packages. 2.2 The Renal Field Engineer
A Field Engineer is a person who works away from their head office or workshop; they travel from site to site to complete routine maintenance and repairs on equipment. They require a high …show more content…
The range of duties varies from Project management to logistics so the optimization of this department is essential for all organisations. Some of the key areas to assess are the market pressures that are driving the field service departments (Dutta, 2005) 3 driving factors for best in class are customer expectation looking for faster and faster resolutions and with lower and lower prices. The SLA’s are becoming another major factor with life cycle costs becoming a bigger influencer for contract award in recent years. The need to measure and analyse the service information is becoming a vital part of the field service department. The use of automated processes for field teams is a must have as exact data can be compiled and relayed to the customer showing an openness and transparency for the customer , thus creating better customer relationships which leads to improved customer …show more content…
Focus on scheduling and planning work tasks such as Preventative Maintenance and scheduled SLA works are reactive predominately with a 58% compliancy rate for SLA compared to 84% of Best in class (Pinder Jr 2015) and the service department will be looked at as a necessary component rather than a revenue provider. Service forecasting and planning can sometimes be overlooked here. The use of technology is basic with reliance on Excel spreadsheets to plan and monitor the workload. The level of performance tends not to be tracked or measured. The use of manual processes is a dominate factor (Singh 2013). Pinder Jr (2015) shows that 37% of processes still involve paperwork in the laggard category. A lower than average first time fix rate is expected due to the manual processes in place such as spare parts manually been checked versus an automated system with max/min levels set (PTC