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Response times and first-time fix rates are at an all-time high for kitchen equipment giant Welbilt. The integration of their data and processes using field service management technology from Asolvi has eliminated copious manual and error-prone interventions. This, in turn, has enabled them to refocus their energies on more important things, like their customers and commitment to innovation. In this case study, Operations Manager Mick Bradley reveals why Welbilt is performing better than ever.

Catering Equipment Suppliers' Association (CESA) has accepted Asolvi as an associate member.

Asolvi, the service management software for Small and Medium Enterprises has announced its membership of the Catering Equipment Suppliers' Association (CESA). As an affiliate of the UK's largest catering equipment trade association, Asolvi will benefit from CESA's information and management resources.

Established 80 years ago, CESA itself is a member of The European Federation of Catering Equipment Manufacturers and has strategic links with UK Government and the British Standards Institution. 

Asolvi will join longstanding CESA members Welbilt and Meiko, both of whom are also clients of the service management software company.

Mike Rand, Asolvi's Client Service's Manager, said joining the association would bring the firm an array of advantages. "We're delighted to be accepted as an associate member of CESA," he explained. "The kitchens and catering sector is an important market for us and we're looking forward to utilising the knowledge that the group offers."

You can read an Asolvi case study on their work with Meiko here.

Sub-Zero & Wolf are cooking with gas. The preferred suppliers of kitchen equipment for celebrity chefs James Martin and Heston Blumenthal as well as interior designer/former Dragon’s Den star Kelly Hoppen who are ‘wolfing’ down the rewards of a complete service management revolution. A year ago, they replaced their outmoded, non-web-based software with Tesseract’s Service Centre 5.1 (SC5.1), improving stock control, reducing call times, and cutting out 2 days’ worth of reporting.

The chef’s choice

Sub-Zero & Wolf are longstanding kitchen appliance connoisseurs who supply, install and maintain top-of-the-range cooking and cooling equipment in domestic settings.

Their products are sold through 250 independent dealers across Europe and are the appliances of choice for chefs, designers and celebrities because of their superior performance and exclusive functions. They range from dual fuel ovens to wine storage to coffee machines and many are compatible with home automation systems.

In 2016, Sub-Zero & Wolf marked 70 years of successful trading with a major overhaul of their field service management system.

The old system — too many cooks

Sub-Zero & Wolf’s previous service management system was a case of too many processes, too many people, too many delays, and too little visibility.

The non-web-based software could only manage one stock location at a time and was always a day out; the company could never accurately tell where an item was at any one time. Technicians had no access to live data in the field, only in the office.

This meant they could only get updated callout information and asset data by dialling in to the system, or by speaking to the admin team on the phone or via email. Planned maintenance scheduling was still done using Excel spreadsheets.

“There were a number of factors that led us to replace our service management software,” says Greg O’Sullivan, European Group Service Manager for Sub-Zero & Wolf. “But ultimately it was because our customers expect a first-class service, and we decided that a first-class service management system would help us do that.”

A recipe for success

Sub-Zero & Wolf happened upon Tesseract at the Service Management Expo in Birmingham. They looked at a variety of solutions, but chose Tesseract because it was web-based, cloud-based, and the best fit for their service management needs.

Now, live data is at their fingertips and numerous process delays have been eliminated. If a service call comes in, a suitable technician is dispatched via the Tesseract system rather than a phone call. Planned maintenance work is scheduled using Tesseract’s assisted diary rather than a slew of discrete spreadsheets.

 

While in the field, technicians can log in to the system remotely at any time and view outstanding jobs and parts availability.

They don’t need to rely on a call or email from the office to find out about a site, a customer and the service history of an asset, because all this can be obtained by running simple searches of the Tesseract Customer Assets database.

This smooth, seamless flow of data has cut down both the number and length of calls between the office and Sub-Zero & Wolf’s 114 Europe-wide engineers. It has also improved the engineers’ ability to see patterns of faults with equipment — a crucial facet of good problem management.

Greg O’Sullivan explains, “Tesseract comes with high levels of automation and saves us huge amounts of time. It’s also a much easier process to manage. We had traffic jams on the old system. We’d get job data and parts requests all in one go because it wasn’t live, but now the jobs trickle through at a friendlier pace.”

A major concern for Sub-Zero & Wolf was stock control. Parts are essential to their business and typically very expensive, so keeping track of them is vital. Despite having stock locations all over Europe, their previous system could only monitor one at a time and was always a day out of sync.

With Tesseract’s Parts Centre module, Sub-Zero & Wolf can monitor all stock locations at once, from warehouse to van to customer, with full, real-time visibility of the installation, usage and repair cycle.

One of the biggest efficiency gains for Sub-Zero & Wolf has been in reporting. O’Sullivan says, “Reporting was a laborious manual process at the end of the month and took two days to compile and complete. With Tesseract, we can extract data about assets, parts used and completed jobs at the touch of a button, and complete a report in 30 seconds.”

 

A further benefit for Sub-Zero & Wolf is Tesseract’s ability to integrate with other systems. This is thanks to an application program interface (API) that enables the transfer of information between SC5.1 and any third party software product. “We were already using TomTom WEBFLEET, which tells us where our technicians are,” says O’Sullivan. “Tesseract integrates with this, transmitting address details for service jobs directly to our technicians’ TomToms. Again, this cuts out a manual process and saves us time.”

A taste for more

Sub-Zero & Wolf are looking to add the Remote Customer Access (RCA) function of SC5.1 to their portfolio of service management modules. At present, dealers and end-user customers have to phone Sub-Zero & Wolf if an equipment fault occurs, and cannot see what’s happening when a job is actioned. RCA allows customers to log in to SC5.1 via a web browser and notify Sub-Zero & Wolf of a problem more quickly, easily and simply than a phone call.

Customers can also monitor progress, move assets, raise sales orders and run reports.

“We’re keen to add Remote Customer Access in the near future to make life easier for our customers,” says O’Sullivan. “What’s great about this is that Tesseract can tailor the visibility of the platform at different levels, simply by changing the permissions. This means our dealers can see data for their customers, but our end-user customers will only see the data that is relevant to them.”

 

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Manitowoc Foodservice UK have been relying on the service management software supplied by Tesseract for 20 years. Now they have decided to further automate their systems with one of Tesseract’s most useful tools – Diary Assist.

With customers like Debenhams, Wetherspoons and the Ministry of Defence, Manitowoc are the world leaders in manufacturing, supplying and maintaining cutting edge kitchen equipment, as well as designing and refitting kitchens.

From ovens, grills, fryers and steamers, to ice machines, refrigerators and beer coolers, Manitowoc produce equipment for numerous renowned and award-winning catering industry brands. These include Garland, Frymaster, Convotherm and Merrychef – the world’s number one designer and supplier of pioneering accelerated cooking systems.

More than 80,000 Merrychef ovens are in use around the world. Frymaster, another of Manitowoc’s leading brands, is a familiar name in catering establishments worldwide, with sales and service capabilities in over 100 countries. Manitowoc employ a consistent commitment to research and development and innovation-led strategies and boast highly advanced manufacturing facilities.

 

With keen eyes for revolutionary technology and efficiency and smooth operation in even the busiest kitchens, Manitowoc are not only concerned with food facilities, but with food itself. Their global team of development chefs can help venues compile creative, innovative menus to suit their customer base and achieve greater success, drawing on their immeasurable experience of the catering industry.

It’s this desire to make their customers’ establishments better and more efficient that sets Manitowoc apart from other food service companies.

No room for error

Manitowoc’s high status and market-leading position mean they cannot afford to let any of their customers down. This is why, 20 years ago, they turned to Tesseract for help in the revolution and modernisation of their service management.

For all of their kitchen installations, Manitowoc have a committed team of engineers who carry out planned and reactive maintenance. Manitowoc use Tesseract to log calls from customers when a piece of equipment incurs a fault, as well as assigning jobs to the engineers, invoicing, parts ordering and reporting. Service requests are transmitted to engineers’ tablet devices using Tesseract’s Remote Engineer Access technology.

Engineers close down jobs on their tablets, at which point the information is transmitted back to Manitowoc instantaneously. Finally, all of Manitowoc’s service activities can be monitored using Tesseract’s fully customisable Crystal Reports, which allow Manitowoc to design and schedule any report they want at any time of day or night. This makes for much better ownership of data.

 

However, choosing which engineers to deploy for both planned maintenance work and reactive tasks was always done manually. Now, in order to further automate their systems, improve efficiency and save huge amounts of time, Manitowoc have integrated Tesseract’s Diary Assist software for both planned and reactive maintenance tasks.

Before the integration of Diary Assist

Manitowoc used to rely totally on a manual system for scheduling engineers for reactive jobs and diarising them for planned maintenance tasks. They used mapping software such as AA Route Planner and the now discontinued Microsoft MapPoint and would assign particular engineers based on location, skill set and fair division of work.

Manitowoc’s manual process for deployment not only took a lot of time, much more than an automated process would, but it also introduced a human element to the decision-making that wasn’t always consistent.

“Before Diary Assist, the deployment of our engineers relied on human intervention and scheduling typically consumed 3 – 4 hours a day,” says Manitowoc. “We had staff trying to ensure that the division of work was fair according to engineers’ skill set and geographical location. A side effect of this was that sometimes it would be unfair and inconsistent.”

How has Diary Assist changed things for Manitowoc?

Diary Assist is a dynamic, centrally hosted web service for call optimisation. It’s designed to handle both planned appointments and reactive service calls and is capable of scheduling 200 hundred calls in just 20 minutes.

The software allocates jobs to engineers based on their skill sets, availability, travel time, work time and shift patterns, as well as call response time and customer site cover times. Manitowoc used to have staff making evaluative decisions about which engineers were most appropriate to allocate; now an automated program does it for them.

Manitowoc says, “We are already seeing the long-term benefits of using Diary Assist. The service provides consistent logic to our scheduling process and saves us 3 – 4 hours a day of manual manipulation, whilst eliminating the potential for human error.”

 

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