At the beginning of 2020, the one technology predicted to finally be on the cusp of an industry-wide breakthrough this year was Augmented Reality (AR). Fast forward to the second half of the year, and that prediction has come true although for different reasons than those predicted.

With Covid-19 driving an urgent need for remote service delivery, suddenly AR almost overnight became a necessity rather than a mere nice-to-have technology. However, while the drive towards remote service delivery has been given turbo-boosters by the pandemic, the critical developments within the technology that we at Field Service News thought would be the catalyst for wider spread adoption of AR in field service.

That development was the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the field service focused AR. Here we look at how AI may well be the missing key to unlock AR’s potential

“The challenges posed by the current global situation and the related change in proximity logics are rapidly transforming many companies’ business processes and their approach to daily activities,” writes Francesco Benvenuto, Product Marketing Manager, OverIT

Having just combined the two technologies (AI and AR) in their 3.0 release of SPACE1 (OverIT’s dedicated AR solution to field service) demonstrated on the Field Service News Digital Symposium. The AI-enhanced version of SPACE1 was undoubtedly impressive with multiple potential time savings aspects that could help get trainee technicians out into the field, bringing value to the organization much, much faster.

However, the emergence of an AR solution underpinned by AI isn’t unique to SPACE1. It is the central premise of Augmentir’s solution. As Russ Fadel, CEO and Co-Founder, Augmentir outlined in an exclusive Field Service News feature where he explained why the next wave of AR implementations in our sector must harness Artificial Intelligence.

 

"What has been ignored is a real opportunity to create sustainable value throughout the organization – not only giving workers the ability to consume information and apply knowledge, but also augmenting the intelligence of the organization..."

- Russ Fadel, Augmentir

 

Writing in August 2019 Fadel had commented, “Despite some early momentum, Enterprise AR alone isn’t enough to deliver sustainable value in the field service sector.

“What has been ignored is a real opportunity to create sustainable value throughout the organization – not only giving workers the ability to consume information and apply knowledge, but also augmenting the intelligence of the organization relative to how it engages empowers, and continually improves its human workforce. At Augmentir, we are calling this Augmented Operations, and we believe that this will transform the service workforce of the future.”

Ultimately, at the heart of successful innovation in the industry is the harnessing of multiple technologies alongside each other.

As Bas De Vos, Vice President of IFS Labs, explains “Combining different technologies is the key to unlocking the full potential of any digital transformation/innovation projects.”

However, for DeVos, there is more that is needed for successful deployment of AR in field service than the introduction of AI.

“AI will certainly support the development of AR, but it’s not the only missing piece in its success,” De Vos suggests

“AI is a key ‘supportive’ technology, the use of AI in computer image processing and its unique learning abilities allows AR processes to develop to the next stage, to achieve the desired end goal and in doing so AI guides AR to new heights.

“However, to unlock the true value of AR’s potential, the world of head-mounted devices needs to accelerate. Today’s adoption speed is still lagging behind expectation which is mostly related to costs and the maturity of the hardware.

“The true value of AR shines best when combined with AI on a head mounted device, rather than a handheld device.”

The argument that De Vos makes undoubtedly holds some weight. Many would agree that the endpoint of AR in a field service environment would involve lightweight head-mounted computes. This allows the field service engineer to work hands-free, while still receiving vital information from either the asset itself via IoT connections, a remote expert or a knowledge management solution embedded into the AR/FSM solution.

However, it should equally be noted that the lack of affordable, field-ready solutions shouldn’t be seen as a barrier to adoption today.

Indeed, the majority of AR solutions today are available as cross-platform, solutions that can function well utilizing the existing technology in your field service technicians toolkit – namely either a smartphone or tablet.

In the Field Service News Digital Symposium presentation on SPACE1, there were multiple benefits of adopting such a tool, even if the implementation is based upon handheld devices.

For example, some of the benefits Benvenuto outlined during the presentation included:

• Maintenance: By providing support to field technicians during maintenance, inspection, and test activities, to enhance productivity, quality and safety, even in those situations with the low network coverage.
• Training: By introducing a new perspective in training activities, allowing users to collaborate everywhere and providing them with remote interaction and knowledge sharing tools.
• Presentation: By driving the way to cooperate to new heights, allowing to involve clients and suppliers from remote to propose products and share advanced contents in real-time, ensuring an unprecedented user experience.

However, what is catching the eye in many of the most impressive AR solutions is the further integration with Knowledge Management features, and this is increasingly reliant on harnessing the most advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies which allows for reshaping and sharing of collected data.

The future of AR in field service has finally begun, and AI will be a fundamental part of that future moving forward.

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about digital transformation in field service @ /www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about the use of Artificial Intelligence in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=artificial+intelligence
• Read more about the use of Augmented Reality in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=augmented+reality+
• Find out more about the solutions OverIT offer field service companies @ www.overit.it/en/
• Find out more about the solutions IFS offer field service companies @ www.ifs.com/uk/
• Find out more about the solutions Augmentir offer field service companies @ www.augmentir.com/

In a recent presentation for the Field Service News Digital Symposium, Mark Hessinger, Vice President, Global Customer Services, 3D Systems, Corporation, outlined the benefits his organisation had witnessed having implemented an Artificial Intelligence solution provided by Aquant.

One of the areas that Hessinger referenced during the presentation was the reduction in repeat visits and the increase in first-time fix rates. This, of course, will have a significant impact on the bottom line of the service P&L with the truck roll almost always being the most expensive line on the spreadsheet. As the adage goes, if you have to send an engineer on-site once then you are breaking even, even if you have to send an engineer twice, you're losing money. So this improvement, in and of itself, was a massive plus in the presentation.

However, given the backdrop of 2020 where the world has radically changed as a result of the reaction to Covid-19, the question was raised during the Q&A that followed Hessinger's presentation whether Aquant's AI-powered triage tool could be suitable to help facilitate zero-touch or remote assistance services as well?

Could the Aquant solution help provide a mechanism for service delivery for those customers who require a guided self-help approach to issue resolution?

"I'd say the tool is a building block to enable us to get there," Hessinger answered when the idea was put to him.

"We need it integrated with the other systems and information because it connects them to the knowledge management, to the information. We're currently doing a proof of concept to pull in some AR (augmented reality) technology as well. We believe integrating the AR technology can help guide someone first using the AI tool to go in the right direction and then guide them remotely on how to execute a repair. If you put both of these pieces together, I think the quantity of remote resolutions will go up dramatically," Hessinger added.

 

"Typically, your field service engineer builds a good relationship with the customer and becomes part of the face of the company right. We still want to have those touch-points, but we need to make sure we're doing them differently..."

 

This leads us to an interesting question - in a post-pandemic world just how much has the perception of value shifted in terms of remote service vs on-site service delivery?

Often it has felt that there's been a more perceived value to a site visit than remote services. As we mentioned earlier, it is an expensive line on the P&L compared to a remote service. This was one of the reasons that many felt that remote assistance technologies such as Augmented Reality have never quite taken off in the way that we might have imagined. However, that has changed massively in the last five months in the eyes of many customers.

Yet, for the savvy service organisation, the on-site service call is far more than a mere maintenance operation. It is an opportunity to engage with the customer, to showcase the expertise within the organisation, and ultimately to secure ongoing business and even open up new revenue streams.

So the question is, how do field service organisations use remote service within their service portfolio as an active engagement channel as many have mastered with the service call?

As Hessinger explains "Typically, your field service engineer builds a good relationship with the customer and becomes part of the face of the company right. We still want to have those touch-points, but we need to make sure we're doing them differently. If I can see you on video, I've made a better connection than if I sent you a text message.

"We need to leverage how do we continue to build those relationships. If we were with a customer three times a year, and now we can do things better, only one time a year, we need to make sure we still have a high touch with the customer to build that kind of rapport and relationship."

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Artificial+intelligence
• Read more exclusive FSN news and features from the Aquant team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Aquant
• Connect with Mark Hessinger on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhessinger/
• Find out more about Aquant's AI-powered service triage @ www.aquant.io/
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io

 

Warranty claims is a $50 billion industry that organizations have overlooked during the digital transformation process. With little insight into how much money is wasted, two to four percent of a company’s revenues vanish into a black hole of fraud or discrepancies. Today, these expenditures are considered the cost of doing business for product manufacturers, but they don’t have to be.

To reign in unnecessary costs while also bringing data-driven processes to warranty claims (and beyond), Aquant created Intelligent Warranty Audit. The AI-driven product enables organizations to leverage large amounts of warranty data, reducing service costs through faster, more accurate claims processing.

Aquant’s AI-driven platform categorizes and prioritizes disparate data, helping warranty managers quickly process or reject high-risk claims. In addition, Aquant’s technology bridges the data gap that exists between the warranty management process and other departments across the organization. With this new digital thread, organizations can fill in a missing part of the transformation puzzle to bolster positive service outcomes and drive innovation in product engineering, sales, and marketing. 

AI-POWERED TECHNOLOGY ANALYZES HIDDEN WARRANTY DATA TO LOWER CLAIM COSTS AND IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

With Intelligent Warranty Audit, organizations will:

• Reduce warranty waste and processing times 
• Encourage service best practices among their network of providers to deliver exceptional customer experiences
• Drive a closed loop of innovation to feed intelligence back into the rest of the organization

“It’s time to liberate warranty departments from the inefficiencies of manual processes and bring them into the 21st century as a key component of digital transformations,” said Assaf Melochna, President and co-founder of Aquant. “Today, leaders accept a wide range of inconsistencies because it hasn’t been cost-effective for claims managers to scale the process. Intelligent Warranty Audit adds ROI by guiding claims managers through the cases that have the biggest impact on the bottom line while providing a clear framework on why a claim falls outside normal parameters.”

Intelligent Warranty Audit infuses teams with accuracy and speed thanks to AI and natural language processing. The technology analyzes data from multiple sources to quickly identify and alert warranty managers to high-risk claims for review by analyzing:

• Asset service history
• Service provider performance
• Customer behavioral trends
• Anomalies in cost, service, or other criteria 

“Enhanced digital tools such as AI are critical beyond simply improving day-to-day operations for warranty departments. Manufacturers and service organizations should view the warranty management process as another opportunity to deliver value to customers,” notes Aly Pinder, program director Service Innovation and Connected Products IDC. “When warranty management departments are included in larger transformation projects, that data becomes another key change agent in the move to deliver exceptional service in the new experience economy.”

 

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Further Reading:

• Learn more about Warranty + AI  @ www.aquant.io/events/idc-webinar/
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/digital-transformation
• Read more about Aquant on Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/aquant
• Read more about Intelligent Warranty Audit @ www.aquant.io/platform/intelligent-warranty-audit/
• Learn more about Aquant @ www.aquant.io

 

In this excerpt from the first Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions, ServiceMax's Coen Jeukens & Kieran Notter expand on the difference between data, insight, action and value.

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Standing on top of a data mountain or drowning in a data lake? 

"I think for many organizations, it's [harnessing the power of the data wihtin their systems] very difficult," begins Coen Jeukens, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax.

"They have run their service organizations for many years in a particular paradigm and when they are confronted with new tools or technologies it's very difficult to get a kind of sneak preview or an idea of what those new tools could bring," Jeukens continues. 

"Of course, from a marketing perspective, we have great messages about IoT data. But what that has brought us a lot of data lakes. So what I really liked in the statement of Jan van Veen  during the Think Tanks was where he talks about about data and insights, and then he talks about value. However, there is one particular step in between. Data can be converted into insights, but the insights must then be converted into an action and the action itself provides the value."

"Sometimes you can create an action on an insight, but if that action doesn't provide any value should you could still continue collecting the data and the insights for it? By looking at and rationalizing that, by looking at things from a methodological perspective, not simply just jumping on the bandwagon of each new technology, but really having a clear understanding of what's the objective and then reverse engineering what you need.

"As for technology, well, it's a great driver, and it's an enabler at the same time, but then you can start making sense of things," Jeukens adds. 

 

"For me, it's about having a vision of what you want, and then measuring what you need to put that in place and then collecting that data.."

- Kieran Notter, ServiceMax

 

"One of the things I've seen all my years is there's there's there's a huge amount of desire to collect data," comments Kieran Notter, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax. 

"To speak to the point Jan was making during the Think Tank, there is not always a vision to understand what to do with that data. I think a lot of the times we try and put in a solution before before we actually understand what the problem is," Notter continues. 

"I think that is often the issue, companies must understand what the problem they are trying to solve is, or the outcome, or the value that they're trying to drive, and then only collect the data for that. 

"If you think about a technician in the workplace, which is either a scenario where you're utilizing the technician to collect the data, or you're utilizing connected products. If we look at that human element, the humans will stop collecting it with accuracy if they think it's not being used or utilized. So for me, it's about having a vision of what you want, and then measuring what you need to put that in place and then collecting that data.

"Don't drown yourself in data," Notter concludes

 

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New integration between the companies’ WorkLink and Field Service Management platforms gives field service technicians real-time access to augmented reality work instructions and remote assistance...

Scope AR, the pioneer of enterprise-class augmented reality (AR) solutions, today announced it has partnered with ServiceMax, the leader in asset-centric field service management, to enable a visual knowledge base for industrial work processes. As a trusted technology partner, Scope AR’s WorkLink platform will integrate with ServiceMax’s Field Service Management (FSM) platform to give field service technicians the real-time knowledge they need to more efficiently and accurately complete work orders. Users will now have access to detailed augmented reality work instructions and the ability to initiate live, remote assistance calls, while enterprise organizations can now capture and scale expert knowledge through the creation of work instruction catalogs. 

 

"We’re excited to be a part of the ServiceMax Partner Program and extend the value of their FSM platform..."

- Dave Gosch, Scope AR

 

“AR is uniquely positioned to help close the growing skills gap in field service across industries,  and can deliver on-demand knowledge transfer and empower workers to become experts at any given task with very little training time,” said Dave Gosch, VP of sales and solutions at Scope AR. “We’re excited to be a part of the ServiceMax Partner Program and extend the value of their FSM platform.” 

Beyond increased efficiencies out in the field, the partnership also delivers benefits at the enterprise level. Insights gained from data available across both platforms provide a comprehensive view of how work is actually completed, offering visibility into areas of continuous improvement or where additional training may be needed. Additionally, enterprise organizations can leverage the creation of work instruction catalogs to build a knowledge repository. This allows companies to effectively overcome the constraints of remote work and the growing skills gap that plagues field service teams. Additionally, companies retain and scale expert knowledge that can be permanently accessed after a worker retires.   

“Visual work instructions that leverage AR provide the ultimate form of knowledge transfer to both novice and expert front-line workers alike, helping them perform the job faster, thus increasing overall business agility,” said Joseph Kenny, VP Global Customer Transformation at ServiceMax. “With the integration of all systems that affect this experience - from field service management and learning and development, to competency management, team communications and now AR work instructions - organizations are finally able to achieve optimized service and skills management.”

 

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Further Reading:

 

• Learn more about how WorkLink seamlessly integrates with the ServiceMax FSM platform @  www.scopear.com/partners/servicemax/. 
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• https://www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Augmented Reality in Field Service  @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Augmented+reality+
• Follow ScopeAR on twitter @ https://twitter.com/scopear
• Follow ServiceMax on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/ServiceMax
• Find out more about the services ServiceMax offer to field service companies @ www.servicemax.com/
• Find out more about the services ScopeAR offer to field service companies @www.scopear.com/

 

In this excerpt of the first Field Service News Think Tank Debrief Sessions we hear from Daniel Brabec VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax as he discusses the deeper layers of value that can be found through digitalisation...

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The multiple touch points of a digital transformation project: 

One area that really came to the fore in this series of Think Tanks was that while at conferences and in the pages of trade journals such as Field Service News we often tend to primarily focus on the efficiencies and the improvements to the bottom line that digitalization can bring, or occasionally we may focus on the other end of the spectrum when we start looking at the various different potential revenue streams enabled by the use of tools such as remote assistance for example.

However, there are so many other areas of the business that digitalisation in the field service operation that connect disparate parts of the business to the field service operation such as marketing, R&D or sales.

As Jason Smith, Director of Field Service, EMEA, 3D Systems Corporation commented: 

"One thing that the embracing of digital and the flow of data that comes with that allows for is the coming together of all of these varous touch points that allows a business to operate as a much more effective whole.

“Everything has to be about data, so we need the best data coming off the machine through the customer to get the right diagnostic in place. Industry 4.0 and connectivity is really helping with that.

“However, we still have a culture amongst engineers where they need to recognise that they are also responsible for the solution. What they have found and how they build up their experience is empirical - they’ve been able to build on that knowledge and telling others, that knowledge capture is key to the whole thing. It’s not just what is wrong with the machine its what did you do to fix it and how can we put that back into a closed-loop cycle so we are constantly improving and evolving the solution.

“We’ve touched on some of the tools to do that and Artificial Intelligence is of course one such tool but making sure that you have that closed-loop in place and its not just one-way traffic is the key to that culture change and so making sure engineers are part of it and recognise it I think is going to be key to improvement.”

 

And Jan van Veen, Manging Director, MoreMomentum also commented: 

"Data is absolutely important; there is no doubt about that. But the value is not in the data; neither is it essentially in the insight.

"What we are seeing is a number of different mechanisms kicking in that are all related to digitalisation. There are several of these. There is the disruptive element in how we are working, but also in the markets we serve at large.

“Some companies will follow the curve, others will be entrants into the market that drive us as a sector to work in a better way, and others will be unable to keep up and will fall away.

“Also, at some point we begin to see a type of de-materialisation. So we get less products being involved as some are taken out of the equation. For example, we don’t have generally have a need for a camera or a calculator anymore as our phones can handle both those functions.

“Another phase we will see is demonetisation, where digital products become so prevalent that they become much cheaper and then finally alongside this we also see democratisation where digital services become available for everybody at an affordable price point.

“We are in the early phase today as we talk about data coming from equipment and what we can do with that. But I think the real challenge is how are we going to turn it into value. Not insight, but services and value propositions using the data.

It certainly seems evident that companies find more than one benefit when implementing some aspect of a digital transformation. However, do companies tend to go into these projects with one vision of what they they're trying to achieve and then actually discover new potential improvement opportunities on along the way or do they have already have a comprehensive understanding of the many facets of their digitalisation roadmap?

"It's a really interesting question," mused Daniel Brabec, VP Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax during the debrief session. 

"If you think about where the actual change comes from, where the internal drive comes from, a lot of times, it'll be on some initiative that's been directed down via the executive team that doesn't necessarily have a touch with service. For example, the CFO might come back and say service is costing us too much money, we need to reduce x and y. And we need to make sure that we're cutting all of our costs here and there and to do that, we need to get our first time fixed rate up to X percent because it's currently at 53%."

 

"There's a lot of really quick wins for organizations to change and do things that are not hard for them in that digital transformation..."

- Daniel Brabec, ServiceMax

 

'What what we find when I work with a lot of these companies is because they're they're so archaic in nature, they don't have any digital tools, they may still be on on a whiteboard or pen and paper out in the field that they know they need to move the needle in one area. But as we start to discover they have a lot of opportunities in other areas that can make a huge impact on their business as well that they haven't even considered," Brabec continues.

"I think pulling all these different departments together to actually discuss some of the potential solutions is key to understanding you know, how they can collaborate and how they can actually enact some of those changes that we're starting to prescribe for them."

"In fact, one of the things that we do is to help our customers is called a maturity assessment," Brabec explains. 

"We'll work with various individuals in the organisation and get their take on where the service team is across various dimensions to to kind of understand as an organization, are they high or low and where can they really move the needle.

"There's a lot of really quick wins for organizations to change and do things that are not hard for them in that digital transformation. That can really move the needle for them as an organization and free up more opportunity to make more of those changes into the future."

 

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During a recent Field Service News Digital Symposium presentation on the use of Aquant's Artificial Intelligence tool within their service triage process, Mark Hessinger, Vice President of Global Customer Service, 3D Systems Corporation, touched on perhaps probably the most pervasive issues that our industry faces.

That issue is how do we stop the tribal knowledge contained in our ageing field service workforce walking out the door. It is a challenge we are seeing emerge across all regions and all industries.

It is a well-documented issue. Many field service companies are currently staring down the barrel of an ageing workforce crisis while struggling to engage with a future generation of workers. Some industries may have a slight advantage, companies at the cutting edge of technology such as 3D Systems for example, who will likely attract bright young minds eager to embrace a technology set to be a fundamental part of the future. Yet, even these companies generally still face higher rates of attrition than acquisition when it comes to talent.

This is perhaps why this presentation by Hessinger resonated so strongly with its audience. As Hessinger went through the multiple benefits of implementing Aquant's AI-powered triage tool, this was one aspect that really struck a chord.

3D Systems had, via Aquant's AI, found the keys to unlock much of the core knowledge locked away in the vast pools of data that all service organisations will hold. They found a way to keep the decades of tribal knowledge within their walls.

"Like other companies, we do have [staff] turnover," Hessinger explains.

 

"We were able to use all that information we had, to continue to support the product so that that was a nice real-life outcome of using the the Aquant tool..."

 

"And on certain product lines, we don't have a lot of printers installed, so we don't have a lot of people trained. For example, on one Multijet printer, our subject matter expert chose to retire a couple of years earlier than we expected. So everybody started to get a little nervous as we only had one other person who did not have the same depth of experience on that product."

"Yet, that person told me, 'you'll be fine, it's all captured in the Aquant tool. I validated that it works,'" Hessinger commented as he outlined a perfect example of a challenge many service leaders may recognise. As Hessinger explained, it was a situation that soon became even more challenging.

"Shortly after that, our second person that knew that technology also left," he continued, "so there I am without our two tech support people for this product line. However, we were still able to continue to run and support customers and actually, we haven't had any escalations on that product in the last nine months since those guys left.

"That is because we were able to use all that information we had, to continue to support the product which is a nice real-life outcome of using the the Aquant tool," he adds.

Essentially, what Hessinger and the team at 3D Systems implemented was an additional AI 'trainer'. They found a technological solution to a human problem. Ultimately, the AI allowed 3D Systems to make that transition from losing two central members of staff on a specific product line. They managed to stop that tribal knowledge leaving the organisation.

This also appeared to be something that could be almost universally applied to any field service scenario - indeed for any organisation that held sizeable layers of data that is currently a massively underutilised information resource. What came across in Hessinger's presentation was that the was already buried within their systems - Aquant surfaced it, neatly and effectively.

As Hessinger explained "Typically we require our field service or tech support personnel to document in the case what happened and that's written down. When you go back and look at it at those notes, [it is usually] because there was a similar case at some point and you start searching for cases to find the information, those are the times you go digging for it.

"Yet, now you're not digging for it. It's accessible and there, everything you've captured," Hessinger explains.

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Artificial+intelligence
• Read more exclusive FSN news and features from the Aquant team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Aquant
• Connect with Mark Hessinger on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhessinger/
• Find out more about Aquant's AI-powered service triage @ www.aquant.io/
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io

 

One of the things that has often been suggested as a potential barrier to the adoption of augmented reality in field service has been the reliance on additional hardware. Indeed, during a recent presentation on the Field Service News Digital Symposium demonstrating OverIT's Space1 Augmented Reality solution for field service workers, a slick video showed the potential use of the tool, with transportation workers using a real ware head-mounted computer...

Would You Like to Know More? www.fieldservicenews.com subscribers can access the full presentation by clicking the button below. If you are yet to subscribe the button below will take you to our subscription page, where you can see the range of subscription options available. 

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In a recent presentation in the Field Service News Digital Symposium, Mark Hessinger, Vice President, Global Customer Services, 3D Systems Corporation outlined how his organisation had harnessed Artificial Intelligence within their service triage and delivery having implemented Aquant’s AI-powered tools.

It was an impressive presentation that outlined several different benefits that 3D Systems Corporation realised in just a matter of months since the implementation.

Perhaps the one critical takeaway from Hessinger’s presentation was just how many aspects of their service delivery had been touched and optimised by the Aquant AI solution.

During the presentation, Hessinger referred to benefits that included vital areas that are high on the agenda for improvement, by many if not all field service organisations. Hessinger explained how they had seen direct performance improvements in the optimisation of the service logistics chain, a significant reduction in truck rolls and an increase in perhaps the most crucial metric within service delivery – first time-fix rates.

 

"All those things come together, the better information you have, the better accuracy you have on resolving things..."

 

However, during the Q&A segment of the presentation, Hessinger was quizzed by Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News about what was the critical factor that drove 3D Systems Corporation to seek out an AI solution and engage with Aquant?

“We met with Aquant at a field service conference, and found somebody who was trying to solve the problem that we were trying to address” Hessinger had commented during the presentation – so what exactly was that problem?

Mostly, it was the result of the evolution of the 3D printing sector itself as the industry evolves from supporting prototype development to full production.

As Hessinger explains, “The key driver was after I joined 3D Systems, we had to make that shift from supporting a prototype house to a production environment. If the printers are not working in a prototyping environment, they [the client] may call today, with an expectation of us being with them in a few days. In production environment you have to be so much faster because a 3D printer not producing final parts directly impacts revenue."

“I was looking for a tool that could help us with just improving the speed and the rate of resolution. All those things come together, the better information you have, the better accuracy you have on resolving things. It just allows you to get to solve the problem faster,” Hessinger adds.

“Resolving problems quicker and more accurately was one of them was the key driver initially.”

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Artificial+intelligence
• Read more exclusive FSN news and features from the Aquant team @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=Aquant
• Connect with Mark Hessinger on LinkedIN @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhessinger/
• Find out more about Aquant's AI-powered service triage @ www.aquant.io/
• Follow Aquant on Twitter @ twitter.com/Aquant_io