Kris Oldland deliver's his editorial leader in issue 16 of Field Service News - the first issue of 2017...
ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘no-fault-found’ CATEGORY
Mar 30, 2017 • Features • FSN20 • Kris Oldland • Magazine (digital editions) • Maximize Europe • Microsoft • No Fault Found • resources • Carsten Groth • Dr John Erkoyuncu • Field Service Events • servicemax
Kris Oldland deliver's his editorial leader in issue 16 of Field Service News - the first issue of 2017...
Field Service News subscribers are entitled to our bi-monthly magazine in both print and digital versions. Subscription is free for field service professionals click here to subscribe now and get a digital copy of issue 16 sent straight to your inbox
Is anyone else starting to feel like 2016 was already a long, long time ago?
Perhaps it was the late flurry of field service conferences towards the end of last year but the tail end of 2016 felt like we were hurtling along at breakneck speed and it felt like it was never going to end.
Yet as is always the way, once it is over and done with and we move onto the next project what felt like an endless session of conferences and interviews seems like a long time ago.
However, that is where I am lucky in my job. For as we have been putting together both this issue and our annual publication “The Handy Little Book For Field Service Managers” i’ve been able to take my time to review all of the interviews and sessions that I sat in on across the last few months and there were some really thought provoking moments amongst them.
As a result this issue is absolutely jam packed with features - in fact we have more features this time around than in any issue to date.
So if I may, I’ll use my column in this issue to just pick up on a few of the highlights that really caught my attention.
Firstly our cover feature “No Fault Found” which is based on my interview with Dr John Erkoyuncu of Cranfield University. I’d seen John giving a fantastic presentation on the topic at ServiceMax’s Maximize Europe event and he was kind enough to talk me through his presentation a little later on over a coffee.
If I’m completely honest it was the first time I’d ever given No Fault Found any serious consideration, but after listening our conversation I realised not just how big a potential issue this could be for field service organisations today, but also how this issue could be easily magnified in the near future if the servitization trend continues to take root.
Another great interview that I was privileged to conduct towards the end of the year was with Microsoft’s Carsten Groth.
Carsten is one of those fantastic people in industry that don’t quite sit within the confines of your normal grey suited, conservative industry professional.
He’s the kind of guy that has no qualms running over to you and giving you a bear hug in the middle of a busy conference auditorium.
He’s a free thinker and an intelligent thinker and a good guy to boot and it’s always a pleasure interviewing him at the time because the conversation is fluid and easy. That said it’s usually a pain writing up his interviews because it’s tricky trying to cut that conversation down enough to fit on the page.
[quote]“Once again we’ve brought together our panel of advisors and locked them in a dark room until they agreed on 20 people that they think will have an influence on our industry across the next twelve months...”
The final feature I’ll pick in my highlights has to be of course the announcement of this year’s FSN20.
Once again we’ve brought together our panel of advisors and locked them in a dark room until they agreed on 20 people that they think will have an influence on our industry across the next twelve months.
There are some familiar faces in the list but some new names too.
What I think is great about the #FSN20 is the discussion it creates.
To be honest if you asked each of member of the panel who put this list together if they thought the list was perfect, they’d probably argue admit that ‘person x’ should replace ‘person y’.
In fact putting the list together was great fun as it always is, because it’s a fantastic exercise in celebrating those in our industry who are driving innovation - and there are certainly more than twenty people doing that for sure!
Field Service News subscribers are entitled to our bi-monthly magazine in both print and digital versions. Subscription is free for field service professionals click here to subscribe now and get a digital copy of issue 16 sent straight to your inbox
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Mar 02, 2017 • Features • Management • Cranfield University • Maximize Europe • No Fault Found • John Erkoyuncu
The challenge of No Fault Found (NFF) diagnosis is possibly the most frustrating situation for both your field service engineers and customers alike. However, left unchecked NFF has the potential to have an even greater negative impact on a field...
The challenge of No Fault Found (NFF) diagnosis is possibly the most frustrating situation for both your field service engineers and customers alike. However, left unchecked NFF has the potential to have an even greater negative impact on a field service organisation. To find out more we spoke to Dr John Erkoyuncu from Cranfield University having earlier seen him give a fascinating presentation on the topic at last year’s Maximize Europe event...
No Fault Found (NFF) can be perhaps the most frustrating end result in any field service visit.
At last year’s Maximize event hosted by ServiceMax in Amsterdam towards the end of the year, Dr John Erkoyuncu of Cranfield University gave a fantastic speech on this topic which had the majority of the audience nodding-along in both empathy as they heard him discuss the issue and in agreement as he looked at the potential size of impact NFF can have on our industry.
Field Service News were able to catch up with Erkoyuncu during the conference to find out more about his thoughts on the topic.
What is No Fault Found?
For those unfamiliar to the terminology NFF or sometimes referred to as No Trouble Found (NTF) is the phenomenon whereby an engineer is unable to diagnose why a fault that has been reported is occurring.
As Erkoyuncu explains “No Fault Found is the case where you have a fault that is reported, you go and try to do some diagnosis and you just can’t find a root cause for what the fault is.”
“As a result of this you end up in a situation where it is unclear what you should do next. You could go back and do some more diagnostic testing and try to drill down to what the cause is - but at this point you don’t know if you should be replacing the item of repairing it.”
Often this decision will be locked between the pressures of being time critical and keeping your customers happy on one side, against possibly unnecessary costs - which when stacked up could serously eat into overall profits, on the other.
In fact, NFF is one of the biggest challenges field service companies face in terms of being able to find suitable resolutions whilst being assured these decisions are made based on a standpoint of best practice and well-educated assumptions.
This issue can of course lead to understandable tensions between manufacturer, service providers and their shared customers.
You are in a situation where you as the manufacturer or service provider can’t in fact explain to the customer what is driving their issue. This is in some ways embarrassing and of course the customer doesn’t want to be paying for a service that has not resolved his problem
“So you have problems in terms of who is paying for the service and whose responsibility it is to fix it. It really is a grey area as it is uncertain as to what’s happened or not and whether that falls within the scope of a warranty.”
“It becomes a matter of trust. From the maintainers, to the solution provider to the customer everyone is facing a challenge.”
The changing ownership of NFF This of course can lead to issues in relationships, with faith being eroded amongst the various parties. This in itself has numerous costs but is it possible to identify a tangible cost of NFF?
“We did a survey with the UK No Fault Found working group and what we were trying to understand was what is the cost of no fault found and who bears this cost,” Erkoyuncu explains.
“What we found was that a large chunk of the overall cost, something like 50 to 60% is taken on by the customer. Whilst this is an average figure it just shows that typically the customer has to take on the ownership of No Fault Found.”
“The amount that the OEM and the supply chain takes on varies between 10 and 30% depending on contracts, which is then shared between the supply chain and the OEM.”
“It just shows that typically it is the customer taking on the costs and as we begin to look at outcome based contracts this simply cannot continue. More and more the OEM and the supply chain will have to start taking on the cost of No Fault Found and this is why awareness of this issue is surely going to grow.”
The actual cost of No Fault Found
Whilst there are of course some easily identifiable calculable costs that Erkoyuncu and his colleagues were able to utilise in their study, there are also numerous softer, intangible effects that service providers and OEMs must be aware of also - which can have significant negative impact on a business.
“The intangible aspects are things like reputation” explains Erkoyuncu “Companies could well lose contracts as a result of not dealing with NFF in an acceptable manner, you may lose the trust that you have built over so many years - how can you quantify that? I’m not sure and I’m not sure if anyone could even begin to quantify that.”
When you are estimating things like cost or even R.O.I for being proactive with no fault found we need to find some numbers against the intangible impact as well.
“For example some people in the audience at today’s session [at Maximize Europe] commented that they felt the customer was really important so they just went ahead and replaced the item.”
“That is the kind of thing you are going to experience just because of that intangible factor.
You don’t know what the fault is, but you do know you don’t want to damage the relationship with the customer.”
How to avoid No Fault Found
It is evident then that NFF could have a significant growing impact for many companies, particularly as outcome based contracts become more in vogue. But is there anything that companies can be doing to help them overcome a problem that is by it’s very essence shrouded in mystery and enigma?
“I think there are multiple things related to this,”Erkoyuncu opens.
Are we designing systems that are fault tolerant to begin with? Is there redundancy built in?
“So one area to address is can we design systems that don’t create problems related to NFF?”
“Another area is around behaviour and people,” Erkoyuncu continues.
“Are they being trained properly? Have they got the right incentive structure? For example let’s look at a case where by a field service engineer is paid on the basis of how many times he fixes an item. If they can’t fix it and they can’t define what the problem is - they don’t get paid. So are they then likely to report on NFF properly.”
“There is a big data issue as well and there is also a major issue around whether the data that is available is comprehensive and robust enough - so, there is an additional challenge here too.”
“Therefore, understanding the trends and identifying what the root problems are is quite hard, as the information is not stored properly.”
“Reporting is absolutely a major challenge, as is diagnostic testing. Is it being undertaken properly?
Is the right tool kit being used. Those things are very important as well as you want to be able to very quickly diagnose the conditions,” he adds.
Key steps to overcoming the challenges of No Fault Found
This is obviously a highly prevalent challenge across the industry and one that as mentioned previously is only set to become magnified as business models of OEMs shift towards servitization.
However, here are some key steps that Erkoyuncu recommends that can help field service providers minimise the potential impact of NFF on their own businesses.
“I think the solution to this is a mixture of technology as well as behavioural and process oriented aspects as well,” Erkoyuncu begins.
“I don’t think there is a single solution. We need to look at things like diagnostic testing for intermittent faults. Companies like Rolls Royce and BAE have started using things like environmental chambers. What this does is allow you to simulate the various environmental conditions to allow you to see quickly what the problem is for specific components”
Companies need to consider how their actual technicians providing the maintenance are behaving and then alongside this assess whether their that organisational culture is actually fostering the types of behaviour that they are looking to avoid
One other very practical piece of advice is to clearly identify your organisations position on NFF within SLA and Warranty contracts.
“This is absolutely and important step,” says Erkoyuncu.
“When you consider the example of FlyBe - they presented some results about the number of NFF they experienced over a set period and they highlighted that about 20% of their service calls were related to NFF.”
“Just looking at this one example you could wipe out all your profits if you ignore the NFF challenge so it should be clearly defined within contracts.”
Field Service News is published by 1927 Media Ltd, an independent publisher whose sole focus is on the field service sector. As such our entire resources are focused on helping drive the field service sector forwards and aiming to best serve our industry through honest, incisive and innovative media coverage of the global field service sector.
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