Mark Wilding is the VP of Global Customer Transformation at ServiceMax, leading a team of experts to support customers in strategic thinking and transformation. He has worked for companies like Rolls-Royce, Aero Engines, Airbus Industries, EDF Nuclear Power, and Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, where he oversaw the global service and support organization. With a background in service, operations, and supply chain, Mark is a qualified engineer, skilled in Lean principles, and holds a Six Sigma Black Belt.
Maximizing technician productivity and utilization starts with eliminating the ‘busy work’ or administrative tasks that are simple but time-consuming. These tasks are often necessary to obtain the information needed to complete a job, but they can bog down your team.
By giving technicians insight into the entitlements of a particular asset and the history of work performed on that piece of equipment, you provide them with a huge head start in eliminating activities that do not generate revenue or effective technician productivity for your business.
Understanding the asset is key, but implementing a system of remote support also plays a big role in maximizing your technicians’ productivity. To effectively achieve this, let’s get a clear understanding of how to measure productivity the right way.
Measuring productivity & identifying the gaps
Field service productivity is often a measure of the efficiency of a technician. When we think of that in relation to a service engineer, it is a measure of the efficiency of an engineer completing a job. One way that service organizations may view productivity is a measure of the number of jobs a technician completed in a single day. Let’s take a look at a simple example:
Jimmy completed 5 jobs today, and Darya completed 3. Based on that limited information, we can conclude that Jimmy is more productive than Darya. When we use a simple measurement of jobs completed, we aren’t getting the whole picture. What if I told you that the assets Jimmy is working on have a Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) of 1 hour, and the equipment Darya is working on is more complex and has a MTTR of 2.5 hours? To ensure we are all on the same page, our definition of MTTR is going to be the start of work to the end of work. We won’t separate out travel time and will assume that all of their administrative work is digital and minimized to 30 minutes per day, for simplicity.
Jimmy: (5 jobs x 1 hour) + 30 minutes admin work = 5.5 hours per day
Darya: (3 jobs x 2.5 hours) + 30 minutes admin work = 8 hours per day
When we start to look at the bigger picture, we begin to wonder what is preventing Jimmy from completing at least 2 more jobs per day. Perhaps there is an opportunity to complete additional training with Jimmy, or he doesn’t have access to the correct tools or information about the asset.
This is why it's important to look at the bigger picture instead of using just one metric to measure productivity. There are several factors and circumstances that are at play, so make sure you identify them when calculating productivity.
How to calculate field service technician utilization
There are numerous benefits with preventive maintenance compared to reactive service, and the more advanced your proactive maintenance strategies are, the bigger the payoff you’ll receive. By becoming more proactive, you can avoid instances of costly unplanned downtime, deliver more efficient and profitable service, create happier customers, and lay the foundation for even more advanced service strategies.
Going back to our simple example using Darya and Jimmy; we know that they each are scheduled to work an 8-hour shift. We also know that the total available hours per day is 8, and the total per week is 40. Jimmy is currently productive for 5 hours per day, and Darya is productive for 7.5. (“But wait,” you say. “It was 5.5 & 8 earlier!”)—we’ll get into productive vs non-productive time in a moment.
To figure out our Utilization rate on a weekly basis, we will take the productive hours and divide them by the available hours.
Jimmy: (5 hours productive per day x 5 days) / 40 hours available = 62.5% utilization
Darya: (7.5 hours productive per day x 5 days) / 40 hours available = 93.75% utilization
As we continue to factor in all the variables, we see that Darya is much more highly utilized than Jimmy. For some companies, on-site work equals billable time. If Darya is billable to the customer 93.75% of the time, then she is much more valuable from a revenue standpoint than Jimmy.
Why didn’t we include the admin time earlier?
This will vary based on the organization, and we will have to examine productive vs non-productive time and billable vs. non-billable.
For many Time & Materials (T&M) service organizations, only time spent traveling to or directly working on equipment is billable to the customer. Activities that occur outside of that, such as administrative work, are not billable and are instead a cost of doing business for the service organization.
However, some contract organizations charge their customers a minimum daily rate, which may increase with overtime, and charge their travel and admin time back to the customer.
Understanding what your service organization views as billable is key to understanding your business—but 100% billable is not the same as 100% utilized! Even if you charge a minimum daily rate, and your tech only takes 4 hours to complete the work, you want to ensure the remainder of their day is spent being productive…that is key to the long-term growth and increasing revenue of the business.
Below are some common examples of activities you may consider non-productive:
- Administrative tasks
- Travel time
- Information Lookup
- Training
- Customer Debriefs
- Parts Ordering
- RMA’s
- Checking Contract Entitlements
3 steps to improve productivity and maximize utilization in the field
- Start measuring your utilization rate, but first identify what you consider productive and non-productive activities and then map out a plan to work toward the elimination of non-productive time. A simple way to start is by listing what activities are revenue generating, and what activities are not.
- Help technicians understand the asset. This is key. Implement a way for them to have visibility into the asset so that they know what to expect and get a head start before they get to the job, such as an asset service management software. This eliminates activities that are not billable or utilized.
- Implementing a system of remote support is also important in maximizing your technicians’ productivity. Most organizations focus on the service engineer, which may seem like a logical route to improve utilization. However, implementing an effective asset service management software will not only impact the technician but also other parts of the organization that improve productivity and utilization. For example, your back-office staff will free up more time for troubleshooting customer issues and resolving them over the phone—avoiding the cost of a truck roll. Schedulers and planners will have more time to ensure the highest priority issues are being resolved first; helping to eliminate the penalty associated with a missed SLA.
An asset service management software like ServiceMax gives you everything you need all in one place. It gives your field service engineers the access into asset history, entitlements, and parts that they need to be as productive as possible. Access to real-time communication ensures that your back office stays connected with the field, allowing regional leaders to gain insights into their teams and provide additional support where needed. Executive leadership will benefit from a clearer understanding of team communication dynamics and will be pleased to see increased utilization rates
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