Sam Klaidman, Founder and Principal Adviser at Middlesex Consulting, analyses the five global trends that will drive the future of field service...

In the science of dynamics speed is defined as the rate of displacement of a moving object over time (d/t). Acceleration is defined as the rate of change of speed over time (d/t2). And then comes jerk – the rate of change of acceleration over time (d/t3).

Why, you ask, do we care? Because until March 2020, we have been experiencing a period in which the rate of change of our “world” has been steadily accelerating. And then COVID-19 came along and changes that were projected to take years to accomplish were somehow accomplished in weeks or months. Mentally we felt as though the car we were riding in suddenly crashed into a bridge support and we were thrown into an airbag. We experienced jerk!

When we operate in a period of acceleration, we have time to prepare our self and our team to adapt to new operating conditions. It is still hard for many people to adapt as quickly as the change occurs, but they still have warning and can frequently participate in designing the new “world.” Unfortunately, the side effect of jerk is that changes suddenly appear and people must adapt without having the time to figure out how they will be affected. They don’t get a clear answer to the age-old question WIIFM (what’s in it for me?).

Since the world of Field Service depends on people, our own, our partners, and our customers, we must be sensitive to how our new operating procedures will impact them and effect their personnel and professional lives. We must consider all these people as we specify, design, implement, test, and go-live with sub-projects that will come together to create the new world that is rushing towards us.

THE five trends driving the future of field service

First a word of warning! On the morning of January 2, 2021, I read this in a Bloomberg News daily mailing:

Last year taught us that sweeping forecasts are pretty much a waste of time. Amid a raging virus, a global recession and a rapid markets turnaround, no one could have guessed that a record $120 trillion of stock would change hands on U.S. exchanges in 2020, that Tesla short-sellers would get burned so badly, or that Bitcoin would be such a huge hit with Wall Street. It’s hard to say which trends will continue into 2021. The forecasts to watch are those that only look one or two months ahead, or 10 to 20 years ahead, Jared Dillian writes in Bloomberg Opinion. As for all the prognostications in between—better to ignore them.

These five trends will drive the future of field service:

In the long-term, climate change will have the greatest influence on field service - how it is performed, who does the actual service work, how are parts managed, and how value is created. And because mitigating climate change is so critical, so complex, and so expensive, we will see unique changes being implemented in each industry and in each geographic entity and finally in each business.

In the medium term, there are two major changes which have already started to impact us:

• New business models like XaaS, IoT, and use of machine language and AI

• The circular economy and refurbishing and/or remanufacturing major assemblies or even complete products

In the short term, we are already seeing major changes due to the desire of customers for touchless service and the continuing trend of the aging workforce. What is not known is how must each of these trends will impact any specific industry or company. Knowing requires a familiarity of the specific details about what is happening behind the closed door of all the major players plus any potential entries. So, this article will discuss each trend and you, the knowledgeable reader, can pass each idea through your specific knowledge filters. You can then decide how much time, effort, and money to invest in getting your business ready to take advantage of any opportunities that develop. Now let’s look individually at each trend starting at the top of the pyramid. We start here because you should always keep this trend in mind as you address each lower level trend to make sure you do not have to redo some lower level change as you address the longer-term drivers.

CLIMATE CHANGE

We are all familiar with the need to make a major reduction in global greenhouse gases. It now appears that in the US, the Biden administration will kick our country’s response to the problem into high gear. In most other developed countries, the effort is already underway. As manufacturers and service providers of energy-driven machines, we will find ourselves on the front lines of the action. The greatest fear for OEMs business is that the environment will cause disruption in manufacturing operations. Think about the forest fires we have seen in the American west and Australia, the need for barriers to hold back tides and storm surges in London and Venice, and the drought in the American south-west during the 1930’s.

In October 2020, Boston Consulting Group published an article Climate Disruption And The Path To Profits For Machinery Makers. Here are five of the identified reasons why machinery OEMs, and their service organizations, will be impacted.

1. End users are disrupted – Reduced use of coal will reduce railroad shipments. Oilfield service will be reduced by decreased production of oil and gas. Power generated by solar and wind equipment will increase.<
2. Product design priorities shift – As manufacturers shift to the circular economy, the service groups may assume responsibility for refurbishment and rebuilding instead of on-site service. And new products will likely be more reliable than the models replaced and use fewer parts.
3. Business models change – Value will shift as manufacturers offer Product as a Service and IoT. Newer design will include fewer wear parts and the need for spares will decline. Increased use of digital twins will reduce on-site troubleshooting of failures. On the upside, newer items will include more software, which presents new service and support opportunities.
4. Value chains become circular – Field engineers will have to become experts in both recycling their equipment and consulting on a facility’s total operation to reduce their carbon footprint.
5. Weather, sea-level, and operational risks increase – Service contracts and warranties will have to change to minimize liability risks due to temperature and water-level changes

NEW BUSINESS MODELS LIKE XAAS

Businesses have been evaluating XaaS since it took off with SaaS. Now they are trying to tie XaaS and IoT into a new service based long-term contract where they are selling customer outcomes instead of hardware and service. The main advantage of the XaaS/pay for performance model is that customers and OEMs goals and objectives are totally aligned by focusing on meeting the customer’s needs. It makes their relationship a win-win partnership, not a win-lose contest. Unfortunately, according to Cooperberg in 2019, currently less than 3% of asset operators buy outcomes instead of assets. This trend is in the medium term because there is a long way to go. A secondary advantage of the hardware as a service model is that the OEM always retains ownership of the product. At the end of life, it can be brought back to the factory (possible a part of the service business) and either totally broken down into recyclable pieces or reusable spare parts or disposed of in an environmentally sound method. The challenge is that the OEM loses the initial sale and revenue when your product ships but gain the recurring revenue which can last over the total lifetime of the products and then extend as upgrades or replacements are installed. When it comes to servitization, where services are merged with products so the buyer can buy outcomes, there are a few obstacles that have to be cleared first. For example, again according to Cooperberg:

• Only 36% of asset operators have data and use it effectively
• 35% of asset operators still use in-house spreadsheets/excel to track current maintenance operations
• Only 35% of OEM’s connect all their new products
  

And a report prepared by The MPI Group in April 2020, The Power of Industry 4.0 in New Product Development stated:

• 40% (average) of revenues are from products with embedded smart devices/intelligence.
• The profit margin on these products is 34% (average), significantly higher than margins for other products (29% average).
• Significant improvements were likely to occur with access to data from products or services in the field.

In other words, most asset operators and OEM’s still are in the install-fix-decommission world. The transition to servitization will take more than 5-years unless something happens to accelerate the transition. And the improved margin may be that driver.

TOUCHLESS SERVICE

Right after COVID-19 hit, asset operators shifted from wanting on-site service to demanding touchless service. They wanted to keep as many outsiders out of their facility because any one of them could be primed to infect their whole workforce. And fortunately, merged/augmented reality product were on the brink of exploding for other reasons. OEM’s liked them because a highly skilled field service technician could stay in one place and support multiple relatively inexpensive and more junior field tech at the same time as one on-site call would take.

As the internal application worked so well, some OEM’s decided to try using the same systems with both B2C customers (even unskilled homeowners) and B2B operators or internal maintenance techs. And it worked! Less response time to get in from of the equipment and a quicker than expected restoral time.

The major challenge, and hence the major opportunity, is spare parts availability. OEM’s do not dispatch service technicians unless 1) they believe the fix will not require parts or 2) the technician a local service engineers carries spare parts as trunk stock, or the OEM coordinates the arrival of the field technician with the arrival of the needed parts.

When the internal facilities’ technician does the work, they don’t usually stock replacement parts. So, the tradeoff is technician travel time or parts delivery time. Or the OEM can stock spare parts in their customer’s facility either as an outright sale or as consigned inventory. This is an opportunity and can come in several ways including:

• Consigning or selling spare parts to the asset operator.
• Creating a local stocking location which is available to all customers in a selected area and located in one of them.
• Stocking parts in a controlled location available to a select group of customers.
• In all these examples, any parts used must be returned to the OEM. The OEM will then ship a replacement part to the stocking location.

Logistics and spare parts availability will be an area that OEM’s focus on as they try and roll-out more touchless service contracts.

AGING WORKFORCE

In September 2020, I published a Thomas Insights post “The Silver Tsunami: As Older Employees Plan for Retirement, It's Time to Plan for the Future of Your Workforce.” The article provides guidance about how to move forward and get ready for a different type of workforce. However, it assumes that your business will be the same in the future as it is today.

But we can see that what you do depends on these five trends. They will impact the number and backgrounds of your internal workforce going forward. And this mix will change depending on how quickly both you and your customers adapt to the solutions you both work together to create. In other words, you can make a one to five-year plan for dealing with each trend, but your labor plan has to be no more than one year because you are dealing with people’s livelihood and you don’t want to be known as a company that hires and fires often.

CONCLUSION

The future has at least five significant initiatives that all manufacturing companies will have to manage. The good news is that you now have the time to plan and test potential decisions.

Remember – “What got you here won’t get you there.”

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about Leadership and Strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more exclusive FSN articles by Sam Klaidman @ www.fieldservicenews.com/sam-klaidman
• Connect to Sam Klaidman @ www.linkedin.com/samklaidman
• Find out more about Middlesex Consulting @ www.middlesexconsulting.com
• Read more from Sam Klaidman @ middlesexconsulting.com/blog

 

Field Service Finder comes in response to covid-19 recruitment challenges.

A collaboration between ServiceMax and freelance marketplace Krios has produced a digital job board for the service sector aimed at firms whose operations are being affected by Covid-19.

ServiceMax Field Service Finder advertises open roles including volunteer opportunities and short-term assistance requests.

impact on Field Service Management Recruitment

The platform comes in response to the pandemic’s impact on service continuity with ServiceMax identifying a varying shift across the sectors it serves. The Biotech and Medical Device verticals, it says are ramping up operations and scaling production, with others reducing or sidelining staff and some switching to a new focus altogether.

"Our mission is to help field services teams keep the world running, and now more than ever there are critical jobs to be filled," said Stacey Epstein, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at ServiceMax. "Because of our close relationships with our customers across industries, we're in a unique position to help connect the talent supply with the talent demand. We're inspired by the efforts made by our customers to pivot and respond to today's crisis and want to support our customers and the industry with their workforce needs now, during this crucial time, as well as in the future."

Prior to the pandemic, there had been significant signs that the service sector was experiencing challenges in filling an expanding talent gap. A Forrester Consulting Study in 2019 interviewed 675 global service professionals on challenges around digital transformation where 97 per cent cited recruiting talent as a major barrier. More specifically, 47 per cent said finding candidates with appropriate knowledge and skills to fill roles was a significant roadblock and it is feared the current situation could exacerbate these issues.

Martin Summerhayes offers a take on the five P's business acronym that could help service directors when they switch their infrastructure back on.

Before you jump to a different conclusion, the five P’s in the title is not the normal phrase that many of you know (poor planning, promotes poor performance!).

As we are all living, and possibly working, in the current restrictions, it seems strange to be thinking of what comes as we start to transition out of these times: locked down, social distancing, restricted movement and travel, etc. Discussing with colleagues and organisations, many are focused on the immediate business needs; furloughing staff; pairing back on the services that are delivered; are just a couple of activities they are focused on. So why think about when we start to exit?

Field Service Management operating in lockdown

Well, to think of exit, we need to consider how we entered the situation. The UK was put into lockdown on Monday 23rd March in an unprecedented step to attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus (Lockdowns and restrictions were also applied across Europe and the rest of the world. If your service business relies on global networks, then this is even more of a complex situation). During the lead up to that day, many companies, organisations, and services had carried on much as normal. Shops; retail outlets; restaurants; public houses; garden centres; sports facilities; the list could go on and on; but most were trading and operating as normal. Almost overnight, the restrictions meant that many places had to close with immediate effect.

Here comes some (but by no means all) of the potential issues. For ease, I have broken them down into three categories.

Product Issues

Having worked in IT Services for many years and been involved in the support of both new, as well as legacy solutions, two big issues with regard to the products spring to mind.

The first is, for many of the organisations that were shut down, how was their IT systems shut down? I would imagine that most, if not all, was shut down as the there were no timescales provided for the lockdown. Were these servers, storage, network devices, etc, shut down properly or were they just turned off? The implications for Windows and Unix environments when not shut down properly, can often mean that you can end up with problems when you try to reboot them (corrupt databases, applications and operating systems spring to mind). In addition, prior to being shut down, did they take a full backup, rather than an incremental one? I have seen situations where restoring incremental backups was a complete nightmare, as the backups were not all stored.

Secondly, as many of us know, when you have a legacy product – say a server – over time the component boards become brittle. The solder joints and the multi-layer component boards get impacted by the constant heat. I have often seen that when an IT product is turned off – either in a planned or unplanned manner – quite often, it fails to start back up. The component boards break down and the solder joints fail.

Repair & Logistic Issues

For many IT service organisations; and I would imagine it is similar in other technology service markets; there is a finite spare, and repair loop. One of the biggest costs of after-sales service, is the provision of spare parts available to service the needs of customers. Both in terms of “good” spares, those spares that are ready to be used to resolve issues, as well as “bad” spares, that have been swapped out of a product to resolve the issue.

"The level of service requests has dropped dramatically as the market sectors, organisations and clients that are served are closed..."

This repair & logistics loop is an almost infinitive loop. Optimising this loop means only having the minimum stock of spares to meet the repair and logistics loop UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES (I have used CAPITALS as this is important!). This normal logistics and repair loop can be between fifteen to twenty days on average. The lockdown has effectively frozen this loop. Where are your spares? In the repair loop at a depot waiting to be shipped back to a repairer? At a repairer awaiting repair? Or at a repairer, repaired, waiting to be shipped back as “good” stock into your stock loop? You might even have been in the process of servicing requests, in which case the spares were in forward stocking locations awaiting call off against new service requests?

Service Staff Issues

For many organisations, the level of service requests has dropped dramatically as the market sectors, organisations and clients that are served are closed. This means that many service technicians, technical couriers and service engineers have been furloughed; retaining the staff, but at the same time, reducing the staff cost overheads verses the services revenues received from clients.

This is where the first set of P’s comes in. “Precise Planning Pre-empts”.

We are going to come out of this at some point. However, it is not going to be a mass switch on of services; mass opening of markets and outlets. Think of a giant “Turn On” switch being pulled. Rather, it is going to be phased approach, something that the UK government is still defining. Every indication is that it will be a phased relaxation of restrictions across industries, sectors and services (I imagine that this is similar across different countries and governments as well).

If you take into account the issues above and the likelihood of the impact of IT failures, the level of service requests and the ability to be able to meet those requests when the services reopen is going to be a huge challenge. I can easily see an increase of service failures of more than 20% increase of normal failure volumes.

This is where elements of “scenario planning” and an element of “game theory” comes into their own. The “Precise Planning” element. You can take a set of scenarios to then precisely plan the impacts. This evolves around asking a series of open ended questions and describing in detail the responses and impacts.

For example: One of your customers that has a mixed legacy IT estate that is distributed across a number of outlets around the country.

• Do you know what is the makeup of the IT products across the customers estate? By outlet? By size of outlet? By type of outlet?
• As it is a mixed legacy estate, do you have failure rates by product for both new, as well as legacy products? Do you have data based on previous peeks of service (say Christmas, holiday peeks, etc)? Or have you had service outages in the past (say due to a power failure) and have details of the resultant failure rate of the products?

"Have you spoken to your customer and asked them what their expectations are?..."

• Have you engaged your most senior support and service engineers to review the estate, failure rates and the likely impact of “turn off v’s shut down” and provided their best judgement of the impacts? Their knowledge and insight are crucial.
• Did the customer instruct its outlet staff to correctly shut down the IT estate, or were they told to just “turn it off”? What is the impact of doing this? Do the support engineers believe that there will be a need to rebuild or restore servers? Replace hard disks that crashed and were destroyed? Do the field engineers have the ability to restore backups? Reinstall applications, databases and operating systems? Or can this be done remotely? If remotely, is there sufficient staff to do this?
• If the customer is allowed to open, will they want to open all of the outlets in one go? Will they phase this? Are there more significant outlets that they will want to open first? Which are the most important? The biggest? The most revenue generator?
• Have you spoken with your customer and asked them what their expectations are?
• Where is the current spares stock? At repairers? In transit? Lost? Based on collating details by product and part, from the questions above, can you proximate the level of stock that you are going to need? This is going to have to be a “rough order of magnitude” as this situation has never occurred before. Will you need to supplement spares stock? How? Do you have whole units in storage that you could break down? Do you have technical support stock that you could use? Does the customer have spare stock?
• From a field service engineer perspective, have you got the skills and technical knowledge to be able to deal with the surge in volume? How can you help the engineers be able to deal with the volume of service requests? Will you have to have extended service hours? Weekend working?
• From a health & safety perspective, it could be that social distancing is still going to be in force. How will the field engineers deal with this? What level of PPE will they need to have to be able to visit the outlet? Will they be mandated to wear masks and gloves? Will they be asked to sanitise their equipment and the outside of the spares boxes? How will you get the PPE to the engineers? Will they be expected to replace / renew PPE at each customer site or only at different customers? Who will purchase the ongoing PPE that the engineers will need? You? Will they be expected to purchase it themselves?
• Note: this list is not exhaustive.

The final part of the 5 P’s is, “Proactive Performance”? Have you captured all of the impacts, potential outcomes and put it into a plan? A resource profile? A spares planning spreadsheet? Have you shared this across your organisation teams? With the customer?

Then multiple scenario this by the many customers you serve and you can see why acting on these scenarios now will support, Proactive Performance. You will need to explore at least 5 different customers and scenarios to start to see a trend and start to see the common elements that you need to work on now.

How many service organisations are taking the time to theorise and plan along these lines during this time? Are you living the scenarios now? Are you planning along these lines? Please do share how you are planning for the future. The service community is living in completely unknown times and it is only through being open and sharing experiences, successes, as well as failures, that we can be successful.

The following quote made me smile:

“If plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters – 204 if you’re in Japan.” ― Claire Cook, writer and motivational speaker

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Further Reading: 

• Read more from Martin Summerhayes @ www.fieldservicenews.com/martinsummerhayes
• Read more Covid-19 related content @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/covid19
• Follow Martin Summerhayes on LinkedIn here.

Zryon's Console X uses AI to analyse and streamline processes.

Kryon has launched ConsoleX, a robot-centric management platform that the firm says can configure, schedule and manage virtual workforces from any location in real time.

The software runs alongside the company's current Full Cycle Automation v20.3 offering and is based on its NGINX server platform, and according to Kryon, is the only solution of its kind on the market today.

A Virtual Service Management Workforce

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses Artificial Intelligence to configure computer software or robots which work across the user interface to collect data and move applications, mirroring human movement. These 'robots' engage with other systems, working effectively on repetitive tasks with no error rate.

Kryon's application allowing users to manage a virtual workforce assigning workloads and task monitoring as they would with human workers while applying analytics to optimise output.

"An automation project isn't over just because it's up and running. As more and more businesses implement business processes, they need stronger tools to continually monitor, analyze, troubleshoot and scale up their RPA solutions," said Harel Tyab, Kryon's CEO.

"Kryon's Full-Cycle Automation suite, the only solution of its kind on the market today, lives up to its name by ensuring optimal performance from start to finish, it already has a proven track record in the field and a rapidly growing base of happy customers, Tyab added.

RPA is becoming increasingly popular among global enterprises as they scale-up on their automation strategy. However, this year a report from Gartner suggested a disruption could be imminent.

Hyperautomation is an all encompassing approach that seeks to identify and automate as many business processes as possible and as quickly as possible. "It involves the use of a combination of technology tools, including but not limited to machine learning, packaged software and automation tools to deliver work," an introduction to the study said. In it, Gartner argue that RPA, far from being the solution, is now just one part of this new process.

Is it time for a reality check when it comes to drones and service? Mark Glover speaks to Robert Garbett from the UK Drone Delivery Group who says mid-mile delivery might be possible but we're a long way from Amazon delivering from above.

Think drones and you probably think of small, multi-rotor objects, when in fact according to the International Organisational Standardization’s (ISO) definition, it’s actually, “Any unmanned system that is autonomously or remotely controlled.”

So this could include: any ground vehicle, any air vehicle, any boat, any ship, any surface sub-sea system, any space system; in fact any hybridization of the above which is remotely controlled or does not have a pilot sitting on board is technically a drone.

POTENTIAL IN Field Service Management

“The image you’ve got in your mind is so wrong. It’s definitely not just a small, flying thing,” says Robert Garbett, the author of that ISO definition and a drone industry expert who’s explaining to me how the technology goes far beyond what we see buzzing in the air. “Once you re-approach the whole topic from that perspective, it opens it out into a far more expansive, exciting and beneficial product. A tiny, remotely controlled spider-shaped air drone really can’t do very much on it’s own but as part of an integrated system with autonomous control, it becomes much more powerful.”

However, drones were airbound in the early 90s, used extensively and effectively for the first time in the Gulf War. In the Spring of 1991, an article appeared in Airpower Journal, penned by Captain P.Tice of the US Air Force. His piece, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: The Force Multiplier of the 1990s, centered around the dwindling number of army personnel and how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) - or drones – could effectively plug the gap.

In the piece Captain Tice said: “When used, UAVs should generally perform missions charecterised by the three Ds: dull, dirty and dangerous.” Now, this was written in the context of military operations: long-term endurance missions that could last several days (dull); the detection of chemical agents (dirty); and reconnaissance behind enemy lines (dangerous), so their use in this instance is very different to delivering an Amazon package, or the delivery of a spare part, but ultimately its purpose is to remove the human from a process.

One could argue service is going in the same direction. The human influence is becoming less as self-diagnosing assets, remote technology and big data gradually impede on an engineer’s role. Will drone assistance be part of their eventual demise?

There’s still some way to go before we see autonomous robots donning overalls and popping round to fix your boiler, but in other sectors such as the airport industry, the influence of drones is already being felt and, according to Garbett, has further potential.

“The service sector in the airport system is huge and a lot of it can be done via autonomous systems or remotely controlled systems: Baggage handling for example,” he says. “The technology could eliminate the need for human beings to be airside increasing security and the efficiency of baggage handling. It could also eliminate the health and safety risks associated with human beings throwing bags around all day.”

"In 1865 a spluttering, noisy vehicle with four wheels was an alien…as…well…a drone in 2020..." 

Garbett is Chief Executive of Drone Major Group, a specialist consultancy advising on the application of drone technology working with customers who want an independent and expert guidance on what is possible, where to procure what they need and how to implement it safely and effectively. In 2018, he founded the UK Drone Delivery Group where over 300 members seek to lobby the UK Government in establishing a clear path to a UK-wide commercial drone industry.

Last month the group published a white paper (currently out for consultation) calling for the creation of long term drone testing areas, a significant step that could speed up the process of acceptance. He does however acknowledge the process is a long one, an evolution almost, referencing regulation in the automotive industry as a blueprint. “Right from the start, you could do what you wanted [when driving] because there were no regulations. Then the regulations started to come in, the first one meant you had to get out of your car at a junction, wave a red flag as you crossed just in case you killed a horse…” He pauses for a moment, “I believe that happened because one horse was killed which is a great example of over regulation.”

I laughed at this. It sounded ridiculous but online investigation revealed 1865 Locomotive Act enforcing a top speed of two miles per hour when passing through towns. The regulation was passed to protect horse and cart, the primary form of travel at the time, where motorists, according to the legislation were expected to “carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn riders and drivers of horses of the approach of locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same”.

It seems ridiculous now, but Garbett’s comparison is a salient one. In 1865 a spluttering, noisy vehicle with four wheels was an alien…as…well…a drone in 2020. In both contexts however, concerns are fueled around safety, taking well over 100 years of further regulation and development before driving became even remotely safe, or less dangerous.

Yet as recently as the 1970s deaths at the wheel were still remarkably high, it took another layer of robust regulation, primarily around seatbelt use to make a dent in the grim statistics. In terms of an evolution, 100 years is more than enough time for change to happen.

Is this the approach then for drone commercial use in the UK? In the group’s white paper the scattering of drone testing areas are cited as ‘sandboxes’, although Garbett prefers Technical Evolution Areas static areas that, he says aren’t really there to  purely  test. “They’re there to take a thing from concept to operational deployment and beyond,” he explains, “and through that learning curve, and to accelerate that learning curve upwards so we really can get the benefit that we currently get from cars. So you link the technology areas and link them across the country and start in safe areas first.”

"We are going to turn this into a technology evolution. Somewhere in the UK where we are starting to deliver parcels, mid-mile, depot to sub-depot.”

The press release accompanying the white paper cited a Barclays’ report valuing the drone market close to $40 billion by 2023 so perhaps its evolution will be quicker if these figures transpire, although the driver lies not in B2C delivery (the idea that Amazon Drones will be dropping parcels from the sky is, according to Garbett feasible but a long way away, “There’s no way you’re going to have sufficient infrastructure and the depth of availability of airspace and the durability of batteries to have a small air drone delivering things to my balcony.”) but in terms of service and logistics, value lies not in last mile delivery but the mid-mile to depots, where the final leg of the journey to the warehouse or factory could take be fulfilled by an autonomous vehicle that trundles into the building carrying the spare part.

Garbett’s knowledge in this area is refreshing and it’s good to hear clarity on a topic that’s been shrouded in mystery, perhaps skewed by Amazon’s glimpse into their own drone programme, and perceived – wrongly – as that “small, tiny flying object”. But what about a watertight use-case for the technology’s commercially? How far away are we from that?

Garbett eludes to a project he’s working on around mid-mile in delivery and logistics. Run in tandem with a company he’s unable to mention the study has entered – encouragingly - into the feasibility stage. “We are going to turn this into a technology evolution,” he enthuses, “somewhere in the UK where we are starting to deliver parcels, mid-mile, depot to sub-depot – live and commercially.”

And the next step? I ask? What we need are companies like your audience to come forward and get involved.  The benefits are there, the technology is there and the will from Government to make this happen is also now there...what we need now is forward thinking companies or trail blazers to come forward so that we can assist them to realise the future.

Over to you then reader and remember, please try to keep that ISO definition in mind. There’s more here than a buzzing spider thing.

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Further Reading: 

• Read more about drones in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/drones
• Read more about the latest use of technology in field service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/technology
• Follow Robert Garnett on LinkedIn here.

Tech that reduces data lag by is set to grow across region and bring benefits to industrial sector.

A report from data and analytics company GlobalData says the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is on the cusp of wide-spread edge computing adoption with industry verticals set to benefit.

Streamlining Service Management

It predicts several sectors in the region taking advantage of the technology including manufacturing, which it says could streamline its industrial processes, improve supply chain movements and even operate heavy equipment more autonomously by adopting the technology.

Driven by Japan and China it foresees APAC second only to North America in terms of the edge computing market, with the two nations together accounting for 61 per cent of its revenue stream. It says the market will grow at an annual compound rate of 21 per cent between 2019 and 2024, reaching a $5.8 billion value.

The rise of edge computing has increased exponentially with the surge in connected assets which require greater band-widths that in some cases, the cloud is unable to cope with, producing lag.

It operates by being geographically closer to a data gathering device where computation is carried out locally avoiding a central processing cloud-based location meaning latency issues can be negated.

Its influence is expected to reach beyond industry, working alongside society's rapidly evolving connected devices ecosystem, including the growth of smart cars and smart cities. As larger data volumes are produced then Edge Computing will be expected to produce swift and accurate processing. Shamim Kahn, Senior Technology Analyst at Global Data says Edge Computing has the capability to keep up with the increase. "Edge computing would be key in handling most of these challenges, as decentralised processing would allow for excellent reponse times and reduced latency," he explained.

Several big tech firms have, in recent weeks, stepped-up their development in the technology including Amazon Web Services who updated their 'Snow' family of edge computing; Microsoft announcing Azure Edge Zones; and Google revealing its Global Mobile Edge Cloud strategy.

The chaos that we all found ourselves thrown into during the global pandemic has meant a lot of introspection from both a personal and corporate perspective for all of us. Yet as we move forwards into the new realities of a post-Covid-19 world Nick Frank outlines where we can find the resilience to not only rebuild, but improve...

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Organisational Resilience: "The ability to survive a crisis and thrive in a world of uncertainty. Resilience is a strategic capability. It isn't just about getting through crises. A truly resilient organisation has two other important capabilities - the foresight and situation awareness to prevent potential crises emerging, and an ability to turn crises into a source of strategic opportunity."

Source: www.resorgs.org.nz

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If there is one thing that we will learn from the current Coronavirus chaos, is that it is resilient people and organisations who survive and thrive! Technology, infrastructure and education can help. But it is the determination of people to do the right thing and not be afraid of adversity that sees families, companies and nations through tough times.

After the fire fighting will come the rebuilding, where Service Leaders will have to decide the future shape of their organisations in a challenging world. Not only will they have to contend with meeting pent-up demand with depleted resources, the challenges of digital disruption and climate change will not have gone away. Companies' survival will depend on how well they can adapt and evolve in a world even more economically constrained. I believe developing personal and organisational resilience will be the key to developing processes, technologies and ways of working that will enable us to overcome the significant obstacles in our path. As I sit in ‘home isolation’ with my family, I can feel a mix of emotions. On one hand fear and confusion. On the other determination and love. These are amplified by the news, social media and radio reports where we see memes on toilet role or rants on social distancing, as well as the odd grand patriotic political speech.

Service Management's GREATEST Challenge

I find myself asking, what do I need to do to move through this? It is certainly not to give in to fear, which is there in some shape or form in all of us. It is more to focus on the what we can do, what we can control, what we can influence. The good news is that these are all aspects of our personality and the mindset we nurture for ourselves. Indeed, this ‘growth’ mindset comes way before we think about technology, processes or even organisation.

Maybe test this assertion for yourself by thinking back to a challenging time you have faced. What got you through it and most importantly what did you learn? For myself this was the birth of our second child. My wife had a very complicated pregnancy with early contractions, which resulted in us going to A&E on multiple occasions, driving to hospital, not knowing whether our baby was alive or dead.

"I would suggest that now is the perfect time to build resilience in ourselves and our organisations..."

My biggest learnings were to be able to live in the moment, acknowledge the fear then move forward, take one step at a time, to focus on what we could control, and not all the other stuff. We were lucky that it was a happy ending, that on reflection helped us to become more resilient and able to handle adversity.

Back to the present days question, “Where do we go from here?”

I would suggest that now is the perfect time to build resilience in ourselves and our organisations, as we move into what hopefully will be more fruitful times. It starts with leaders who recognise that their people are key to current and future profitability. Those who have let fear enter their hearts and pre-maturely downsized their teams to fit the perceived economic reality, will lose the trust of their employees. Their road to resilience will probably be longer and harder than those that retain the goodwill. Indeed, research shows that organisations that survive and flourish after hardship are those that have a committed and motivated staff.

"Build resilience in your people, and the resilience of your technology, processes and organisation will evolve as well..."

The benefits are not just people and organisations who are faster to adapt to changing circumstances, there is a solid economic rational as well. Studies such as this one from PWC in 2014 show “initiatives and programs that fostered a resilient and mentally healthy workplace returned $2.30 for every dollar spent — with the return coming in the form of lower health care costs, higher productivity, lower absenteeism and decreased turnover”. So, resilience does pay!

As we live through the COVID crisis and start to come out the other end, we have a great opportunity to build resilience into ourselves and our organisations. There are many models for individual & organisational resilience, but from a Service Leaders perspective, there are three key messages I would recommend to focus on:

• Self-Belief
• Focusing on solutions
• Always Learning
  
  

Self-Belief

If you or your organisation do not have a strong sense of purpose, then whatever models or philosophies you choose to follow are unlikely to succeed. At a leadership level this means being able to truly role model the values that most modern organisations espouse such as respect, integrity and accountability. Teams respond to how they see their leaders communicate and demonstrate these values and behaviours. But good values are only part of the story.

People need to understand that the organisation has a clear direction so that they can readily identify with its “Purpose” and “Culture”. If all these messages are coherent, then self-belief will grow and flourish. Perhaps one of the simplest actions you can take is to practice the art of delegation. The more people can influence the what and how of their jobs, the more they are engaged, own and believe in what they can do.

Focusing on Solutions

People and companies who can focus on solutions are constantly moving forward. These are people who can recognise and articulate problems, but do not dwell on who to blame for a situation, but rather how to move forward and solve the challenges. Build this into all your communications.

"The huge customer problems that your teams have faced means that they must have focused on finding new ways to operate and deliver to customers..."

Emphasising this step by step approach towards the goal, encourage appropriate risk taking and reward teams for finding solutions. Encourage collective responsibility but hold individuals to account. You will know your organisation is moving in the right direction when you hear your people using the phrase “Yes, And….” rather than, “Yes, But”.

Always Learning 

The organisations most likely to adopt new ways of doing things or those where learning and change is embedded into the way of life. These are the organisations where people seem to have new roles every 3-4 years. Although too much change can be disruptive, it is a very good indicator of how good an organisation is at taking on and running with new ideas. We have heard many service managers talking about how they have had crash courses in remote diagnostics or augmented reality technologies.

What an opportunity to learn! To build on these experiences, make sure you re-iterate the importance of always reviewing lessons learned? Indeed, the recurring themes from companies that demonstrate resilience are: Communicate, Communicate, Talk, Listen, Take Action and Communicate again!

These three behaviours allow us to face reality in the present, pulling on past experiences and others to find the best solutions. Whether they are applied in personal situations such as a difficult pregnancy, or in our professional lives, there is always an opportunity to grow. In the current crisis, all business people I have spoken to have had these three fundamental beliefs well a truly shaken. Just surviving should show the importance of self-belief in overcoming adversity.

The huge customer problems that your teams have faced means that they must have focused on finding new ways to operate and deliver to customers. I would be very surprised if your people have not got some learnings and ideas out of these experiences. If you can now build on these three behaviours, then the challenges of digital disruption and global warming may be transformed from threat to opportunity!

 

If you would like to know more about how to take your team on this journey, then contact Nick at nick.frank@si2partners.com 

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more about resilient organisations @ www.resorgs.org.nz/about-resorgs/what-is-organisational-resilience/
• Read more about building personal resilience in the workplace @ hbr.org/2016/06/627-building-resilience-ic-5-ways-to-build-your-personal-resilience-at-work
• Read more about the The Ken Ginsberg's 7 Cs @ - www.portlandpediatric.com/console//page-images/files/building-resilience/All%20Ages/Seven%20Cs.pdf
• Read more about the impact of Covid-19 on the field service sector @ www.fieldservicenews.com/covid-19
• Read more of Nick's articles for Field Service News @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/nick-frank
• Read more about Nick's work with Si2 Partners @ si2partners.com
• Follow Nick's work on Twitter @ twitter.com/si2partners
• Connect with Nick on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/nick-frank-2756a51

A whitepaper from the UK Drone Delivery group says implementing testing grounds for the technology could accelerate a potentially successful UK drone industry.

The UK Drone Delivery Group says a mass-participation commercial drone testing programme would be a significant step in bringing the drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to the country's skies.

In a recently published white paper the group, made up of 300 senior leaders, calls for the development of new testing grounds which it says will contribute to the UK becoming a world leader in the drone industry.

Service delivery

The publication of the white paper comes as the use of UAVs for commercial purposes such as parcel and service deliveries continues to be plagued with issues around legislation and regulation.

Currently UAVs operating Beyond Visual Line of Site (BVLOS) require permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to operate. There is also ambiguity on Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) and the development of an Unmanned Air Traffic Management System (UTM) - Air Traffic Control for drones - continues.

The group formed in 2018 by drone industry expert Robert Garbett is ultimately seeking to agree on a solution that covers all BVLOS, VTOL and (UTM) issues and to eventually lobby government in establishing a clear path to a UK-wide commercial drone industry.

Garbett says implementing the could bring substantial benefits to the country but indicated the need for testing areas needed to happen swiftly. "Facilitating a world leading UK commercial drone industry will bring immense benefits to UK plc, driving innovation, wealth creation and employment opportunities right across the economy," he said.

"...we need to act now. We are keen to identify new testing grounds to be used for take-off and landing, ideally including airports and airfields, but also forests, remote coastal areas and ports through to residential areas and other dense urban environments."

The whitepaper will now undergo a period of consultation followed by a review with full completion expected by the end of June. A draft of the white paper can be found here, which includes a facility for comments. Feedback is required by the 31 May.

In service, the use of drones has been discussed as a way to assist in final-mile delivery particularly in traffic-dense urban areas. Amazon have been hinting at a drone delivery service since 2013. Amazon Prime Air was showcased at last year's re:MARS conference but it remains grounded due to aviation regulations.

 

Dr. Shaun West, of Lucerne University, explains why increasingly it seems that we have made the mistake of designing services with the machine in mind and us mere humans are developing a habit of just getting in the way...

I don’t like to be treated as a cog in a larger wheel and so why do we often design systems that treat us as if we were a cog in a complex system? This has been to me often a contradiction we see in the modern world where services are more and more standardized so that we feel we are there to service the machine.

The Importance of Service Design

My recent trip through Heathrow was very much in that vain – services (often hidden services) have been dehumanized that the experience for all actors involved is very poor.

Agency within the system at Heathrow has been lost for all actors leading you to consider that sheep might have a better experience, but at least the system is cost-effective and compliant. But service science and through service design, we don’t have to design the future world like this - we can and must do better. 

We are trying to look at things in a more human-centric approach with our Smart Twin’s project where, with ten partners, we are building digital twins for different use cases. Within a number of the cases, the interactions with the digital assistant are really important as they are supporting decision-making processes.

In other cases, we’re considering how to delegate important tasks to the digital assistant and expecting them to return for new instructions when problems start to build. This is a very different position from asking Siri to find the music I’ve been listening too (Nylon Strung by Underworld if you were interested) or to tell my heating system at home to change the set-point to 19°C from 14°C.

This returns us to the thought that “we need to remember that the human is part of the system rather than subservient to the system”. Given that many of us are in the more technical environment, it is worth looking at how we used to treat machines – we gave them care and attention, we looked after them and we listened to them.

In effect, we treated them as if they were human in many aspects. This was part of the logic that we initially used with the development of the Avatar model. (See figure 1 below). To keep the truck working for me I have to look after it and treat it with respect, if I don’t it will stop doing what I expect of it.

 

 

The model shows graphically what you need to do for it and what it will do for you – over the life-cycle you can see the whole range of services that it needs to consume to deliver for you. My coffee machine behaves just like this – if I don’t fulfil my side of the bargain it delivers me poor coffee.

When digitalization takes place we automate jobs so, therefore, people just resist the change. How true is this really? It depends… robotic or digital service assistants can be deployed.

The ‘self-service kiosk’ service assistants can, in product dominate logic, appear to be a major step forward on the service. It becomes possible to have one “service operative” whose real job appears to tell me how I should be interacting with their new solution rather than allow redeployment of staff to improve the overall customer journey and experience.

In a case I know well, the digital assistant does this by taking away tasks that the current service desk operators are poor at performing and allowing them to focus on supporting the customer with real issues – the objective of the service desk.

Here the service desk didn’t want to go back to the old way of working. Interestingly, they are now happier in their work and doing a better job.

The common theme here is to focus on all people and machines with respect and understand their basic needs and requirements, as well as what you're expecting from them when building digital solutions.

Agency is important for people; this places us in ‘control’ and allows us to have some control and understanding of what is happening. It stops us from feeling like being a small cog in a large complex wheel. Agency also brings co-creation of value, again important as the literature confirms that lasting relationships are built on co-creation of value and joint decision making between many actors.

Such relationships also create social and emotional value during service engagements and somehow we need to learn to do this effectively with digital helpers, assistants, and advisors.