Service Matters from MCA Solutions

We recently co-authored an article published in Industry Week with our partner Axeda titled "Remote Service: Optimizing Spare Parts Inventory for Manufacturers."  The article focuses on the challenges of managing the service business and how remote service can help maintain high levels of uptime for supported equipment.

Remote service, (remote monitoring of equipment at customer sites to proactively respond to service needs) has become a standard in certain industries, such as complex medical equipment, and a competitive differentiator in others.   Since acquiring Questra, Axeda has become the market leader with a broad customer base. 

As the article notes, advanced users of remote service software are leveraging data to better manage service events and parts inventory in the following ways:

• Using data captured on equipment configuration and operating parameters to feed spares forecasting systems to better forecast inventory requirements
• Proactively diagnosing potential equipment problems and planning service events so that material can be positioned in advance of the event rather than expedited after the on-site diagnosis
• Remotely repairing problems through software fixes rather than dispatching a field engineer

Gerber Scientific, using an integrated approach to remote service and spare parts planning, can more accurately identify problems and expects to reduce the amount of floating inventory, ultimately reducing storage costs. With better mean time to repair (MTTR) data, there's also an opportunity to increase response times and reduce system downtime for Gerber's customers.