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As apprentices learn the strands of Industry 4.0 will knowledge be a clean break from what’s gone before or will the past also influence the future? Mark Glover finds out more...

As we navigate our way through industry 4.0, discarding maps for GPS, we walk roads fizzing with IoT. Our watches, homes and cars are now ‘smart’, working together to streamline our experiences, where real-life merges with a virtual interface. The revolution is here and all areas of commerce are being affected by this shift, most notably manufacturing. But is industry 4.0 as much as a revolution as the three that preceded it? 

Arguably, the period between 1760 and 1840 was the most fundamental in terms of changes to the sector, where hand or animal-based methods were cast away in favour of more productive mechanized factory systems. This shift, one could argue, mirrors today's digital landscape, where in its simplest form, digitization is making paper-based, heavy manual-led procedures obsolete.

Today images of grey chimneys pluming grey smoke from grey factories are still commonplace in some places, but for those working inside factories of yesteryear conditions were harsh. Long shifts and few breaks pushed workers to the extreme on a shop floor where health was obsolete and productivity the priority. In short, money-led mill and factory owners had no time for wellbeing. 

That said, the period did bring a wave of advantages including a surge in work for regions where unemployment was high, however impatient owners provided little to no training on operating these new machines, which, to those fresh employees, must have seemed like something from another world and not a little daunting. Employees’ rights were all but nominal so failure to pick up the complex workings could see you back out on the cobbled-streets just as quickly as you came in. 

An apprenticeship differed substantially to what we know today. Owners took advantage of the many poor, orphaned children of the time drafting in a swathe to work the machines. In return, the children received no remuneration but were afforded lodgings and food instead, which, to some, was just as valuable.  

Three revolutions on much has obviously changed, including the modern apprenticeships. Today, young people learning this fourth manufacturing cycle learn data and digitalisation; algorithms and AI. The workings of a coal-powered furnace are skills less called for. Data is the new fossil fuel. 

In the UK at least, apprenticeships took a hit in the 90s when the government removed the levy for employees taking on trainees. I’ve written much about the impact this is having on the manufacturing workforce, particularly as workers age and eventually retire leaving a vast chasm of knowledge in their wake. Running alongside this is a general attitude from young people, the next potential generation of engineers, who see the sector – particularly service - as a dirty, lonely and tough environment with little reward.  Sound familiar? 

 

"A nod to the past might just enhance the future..."

 

 

Now you’d expect large companies to be on top of this. To be fully aware of the importance of having young people fill their shop floors. Much like a successful sports team has a strong academy programme, companies like Siemens are recognising and instigating strong apprenticeship placements. 

Last year the company announced a digital apprenticeship scheme to compliment the evolution of their own digital factories. The scheme pays selected students £3,000-a-year from the second year of university as well as up to 12-weeks paid summer placement throughout the duration of their studies within a Siemens business. At the end of their degree they will be given the chance to join one of the firm's many graduate schemes 

When the press release went out showcasing the scheme a quote from Brian Holliday, MD of Siemens’ Digital Industries, outlined its intentions. "By strengthening links between business and our world-leading universities," Holliday said, "we can inspire and nurture talent to support the UK’s leading role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” 

So how do you inspire and nurture the next wave of the modern workforce? To find out more I spoke to the Head of R&D at Siemens’ digital factory in Congleton, Ian Donald to discuss the origins of the programme and how ties to the past will form the future. 

“We wanted to create an academy that takes the traditional courses that people are on." he tells me over the phone, "and we want to add a digitilisation and a data analytics element to that.”  

Siemens run a UK Engineering Directors’ and Manager’s Forum where senior employees discuss strategic action points potential initiatives. One of the forum’s sub-groups focuses on skills, which Ian leads on and its this group that identified traditional engineering courses in manufacturing, electrical and mechanical were failing to focus on digitilsation and future digitilisation skills. 

A firm understanding of big data, data mining and AI are all necessary but Ian pinpoints the digital twin, a way of replicating from the virtual to 

 

the real-world, as an important learning curve as it incorporates elements of modern and traditional engineering. “You need an understanding of simulation and data,” he explains, “but you also need the hands-on experience of a traditional engineering role such as problem solving. So it’s about bringing these worlds together.” 

The word revolution in industry suggests drastic change, where the old ways become extinct, replaced by modern more efficient processes. However, can such a process be a clean break? Surely its more evolution than revolution? No change management project rips up what’s gone before and leaps blindly.

Perhaps more than previous industry revolutions, industry 4.0 is going to look back before it moves fully forward and to take the workforce with it. For apprentices, this is an exciting time as they grapple with exciting concepts like digital twins and data mining, however a nod to the past might just enhance the future.

Programme offers undergraduates up to 3,000-a-year sponsorship and up to 12-weeks paid summer placements.

Field Service News Editor-in-Chief, Kris Oldland talks exclusively to Graeme Coyne of Siemens about why an attitude of exploring continuous improvement is ingrained in the company’s DNA...

The Aston Spring Servitization Conference is a unique event in that it brings together both industry practitioners and academics to discuss the evolving trends in servitization – a key shift in business thinking that puts field service at the heart of a businesses success.

The presentations come thick and fast, and as would be expected by a conference hosted by a leading industry focussed university, there is reasonably heavy bias towards the academics when it comes to speakers.

And whilst the rapid fire format (around 50 presentations in two days) can foster a great deal of discussion and cover a wide and varied number of research areas across the spectrum of servitization, there is always a danger of death by power point when trying to cover so much ground in such a short period.

Therefore, when Siemen’s Graeme Coyne took to the stage armed with a presentation that featured just three simple slides, it was not only a bold approach but a welcome one.

 

Coyne, has two key qualities that are essential in a senior field service exec.

He is both genuinely approachable and easy to talk to, whilst having a deep rooted desire to continuously look for improvement.

After his presentation I caught up with him to talk through some of the key points that he raised during his 30 minute key note, which was well received by both the academics and the practitioners in attendance.

One of the first things that I wanted to pick up with Coyne was how the culture of Siemens as an organisation mirrored his own attitude towards adopting an approach that is all about continuous improvement, and how that translates across both product development and service delivery.

“We do it [focus on continuous improvement] across the company in every process we do – so it could be service coordination, how we deal with spare parts, and how we manage our service engineers. But we always look at it from the point of view of how can we do it better?” Coyne replied

“We use ‘plan, do, check, act.’ or GEMBA. We have two meetings every week within our department to ask ‘how can we do the service coordination part better?’ Somebody comes up with an idea, it’s discussed in an open forum, and if we think it is worth investigating we ask them to go out and develop the idea further.”

“We’ve had this philosophy for many years. It’s all about what exactly is the problem - can you define it? What’s the root cause and what are the options?”

 

“The main thing is to launch it, monitor it and then evaluate it. You have to keep going round in this loop and it is embedded in our culture.”

One area of Coyne’s presentation that particularly caught my attention, was when he spoke out quite strongly against the productisation of services.

Given Coyne’s experience this was an area that I was interested to dig a little deeper into.

What was it that drove his thinking on this?

“We are centrally controlled and have products that are developed from our headquarters and this can lead a view on services that begins with the product and then looks at what services can we develop for them. You then end up with product people devising a lead service and saying sell that service,” Coyne begins.

“My view is different. I’m in a region, and dealing with end customers."

"Essentially we know what someone like Unilever, Coca-Cola or Ford Motor Company want and come at it from a the reverse point of view and it’s very difficult to slot a productised service into the customer’s needs. It may not fit; it may not be what they want.”

 

Pushing a bit further on this I was keen to see if Coyne felt that this was an issue felt more keenly by multi-nationals, who all too often are further removed from their customers than smaller, more localised competitors.

In fact whilst Coyne does admit there is a danger for larger organisations to become disengaged from their client base, he also believes that if multinationals approach cooperation between different regions correctly there can be huge benefits in terms of knowledge sharing.

“What I’ve seen is people from the regions bringing in new perspectives and ideas. For example, twenty years ago I was based in Germany and I brought in a perspective from the UK, other colleagues brought in opinions from other countries like Finland and Italy.

“More recently we have begun to have regular meetings using video conferencing for up to an hour at a time, where we do best practice sharing."

"Basically we pinch with pride!” He says with a wry grin.

“For example, we’ve just found out our team in Belgium have an approach for a particular customer type and product type and we realised they’ve been doing what we want to do now in the UK for the last 17 years.”

“They already know what works, how much it costs and what the benefits have been. So we can take best practice sharing and use it and implement it in our country to suit our customers needs.”

Given the setting of our conversation, I was also keen to understand just how far along the path Siemens is towards advanced services and servitization.

“In terms of the move from SLAs to performance based contracts we’ve done it from certain places, in the world,” he begins.

“Very often where the customer themselves doesn’t have the wherewithal to do it [manage the service chain] they may rely on us. They rely on our management skills to be able to deliver something where we can have KPIs based on the quality of product they’re producing, the volume of product and improving productivity.”

“For many years in Siemens now we’ve had an approach to customers that says we focus on four things. Firstly can we improve their turn over? If they can make more things they could possibly sell more! We don’t control their market in the service world but we can give them the ability to do that.”

“We also look at how we can reduce their cost base, their utilisation of people, spare parts management; there are many things you can look at in reducing costs.”

“The third part is asset availability and using new technology like real time condition monitoring services to predict when assets need to be serviced and maintained. In that way we reduce downtime and become proactive rather than reactive.”

“The final part is to do with sustainability. Let’s look at the water industry for example - a regulated business that has to guarantee the quality of the water that they give to their consumers, if we can do something like putting in instrumentation products and calibrate them so that they don’t get penalised by their regulator, it further adds strength to our role in supporting their business and gives us greater customer loyalty.”

 

Of course whilst the shift towards delivering advanced services is heavily reliant upon changing the culture both within your own organisation but also amongst your customers also, technology – particularly the IoT is playing a critical role in enabling companies to be able to deliver such solutions.

But how big a challenge is it for a company like Siemens, with well over 100,000 assets out in the field globally (and some of these assets are 30 even 40 years old) moving to IoT?

“It can be hard but a lot of the equipment that is thirty or forty years old tends to be power related. Its drives, motors and other individual items that were never networked in any way shape or form” explains Coyne.

“Industry 4.0 is allowing everything to communicate. We have a lifecycle information service we offer where we will take the installed base from the customer, analyse it, and point out where they might be at risk.”

“We get situations such as a ship turning up in port with a bow thruster that needs a service - it might be thirty years old and they still expect us to do it.

There is no way that, that is connected in the internet and in future we will be much better at supporting our products as they will be fitted with Industry 4.0 compatible connectivity”

“But that is the dilemma we have in terms of looking after legacy products, and then looking to the future and saying if you specify this in these systems we are going to be able to support you way, way better. Rather than an adhoc approach you can plan it and manage it better.”

 

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The great and the good of the service management industry came together at this years Service Management Expo held in London's Exel and Field Service News was at the heart of the action hosting the Field Service Solutions Zone.

Here we bring you a selection of the speakers from Day One including: George De Boer, International Alliance Manager, TomTom Telematics, Professor Tim Baines, Aston Business School, Nick Frank, Principal Consultant at Frank Partners, Steve Foxley, Customer Services Director Siemens.

 

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Across December and January we asked our readers to nominate candidates for the inaugural #FSN20, a list of the twenty most influential people in field service. We received nominations from across the globe through social media, email and even a phone call or two directly into the news-desk.

Armed with a list of candidates, a Field Service News panel selected the final list of twenty based on the number of nominations, their impact on the industry (past, present and future) and their sphere of influence in both the physical and digital world.

After much long deliberation, heartful debate (read arguing) and enormous amounts of coffee we managed to whittle our list down to a final twenty which we pleased to present to you here the inaugural edition of the #FSN20. You may not agree with our selection and if you don’t tell us, tell your friends, tell your colleagues, hell tell the world – because at the heart of it that’s what this list is all about, getting people talking about excellence in field service and raising the profile of those leading us to a better future.

We are now announcing who made the list in alphabetical order in four sections across four days. So without further ado we are pleased to bring you the second five of the #FSN20

Professor Elgar Fleisch, University of St. Gallen

With an extensive academic background that covers mechanical engineering, business economics and artificial intelligence, Fleisch has both an extensive understanding of how technology can influence business and an international reputation to match that understanding.

He has focused his research on the joining of the physical and digital worlds since the very birth of the Internet of Things and is, thus, highly regarded in the sphere. It is likely no coincidence that his presence on the executive board of CoreSystems coincides with the rapid rise of the Swiss field service management software provider, whose field service offering was the first product of its type to start taking advantage of IoT.

Follow Edgar @coresystems

 

 

Dave Hart, VP of Global Customer Transformation, ServiceMax

Another of those on our list who has worked their way upwards from field service engineer; in fact, Hart has taken most of the steps on the ladder.

From Service Engineer to VP of Service, from managing small regional teams through to managing thousands of engineers across Europe, he’s been there and done it. With this background there is an unbridled wealth of experience that Hart is able to share.

Therefore it was a great move by ServiceMax in employing him to help share that experience and deep understanding of field service with their expanding customer base.

Follow Dave @davehartprofit 

 

Martin Hotass, General Manager, Siemens Professional Education

One of the biggest risks field service faces is an ageing workforce and Siemens is one company at the forefront of tackling this problem head on.

Hotass is not only leading the charge, engaging with students and colleagues alike, but in speaking to him, he is truly passionate about bringing the best young talent not only to Siemens but also to the industry in general.

If field service is going to overcome the significant issue of replacing the current workforce successfully we need more with Hotass’ dedication to the task.

Follow Martin @SiemensUKNews

 

Professor Howard Lightfoot, Cranfield University

Co-author on ”Made to Serve” and another significant figure in the servitization movement. However, Lightfoot’s inclusion within the list is more based on his current work at Cranfield University where he is playing an instrumental role in educating the next generation of engineers via the use of some truly groundbreaking technology.

With the field service industries facing a very real crisis of an ageing workforce, the work Lightfoot is currently performing could have a profound impact on the ability of field service companies to survive this crisis with minimal impact.

Follow Howard @howardPSS

 

Mynul Khan, Founder, Field Nation

The shift away from traditional work contracts to outsourcing to local contractors has an obvious appeal for field service organisations and Field Nation, a product of Khan’s own vision, is a perfect tool for facilitating this in the twenty-first century. Dubbed an ‘ebay for field workers’ Field Nation connects workers with contractors across the U.S.

Whether such a solution could work in the multi-language, cross-border regulation framework of Europe is yet to be seen, but the rapid adoption of Field Nation suggests that there is certainly a market in the home shores at least.

Follow Mynul @fieldnation

 

See the rest of the list here: Part One, Part Three, Part Four

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Looking to the future is not just about which technology you should be applying to your mobile workforce to ensure that you are beating productivity level KPIs, it is also about looking at how you can ensure sustained growth within the business.

A key part of this is of course staffing.

However, for many companies an ageing workforce could prove to be a significant hurdle to not only growing their business but also to simply maintaining their existing size and standards. One such company that is attempting to tackle the issue before it becomes irreversible is Siemens.

“We have a habit of looking a few years ahead and we are looking at where will we be in 2020” states Graeme Coyne, Business Development Manager, Siemens Customer Services

“Our particular department is about 200 people in the UK. Based on the growth of our department over the last few years, we believe that by 2020 we will need around 250 people.” on to Coyne explains before going highlight the gravity of the situation that the manufacturing giant faced.

“We had a problem. We have 200 employees now and we needed 250 in six years time but we estimated we were going to lose about 100 people through retirement by then also”

“We’ve got an ageing population. I’ve personally been in Siemens for 30 years; the oldest person in our service organisation is 75 years old. There is a big bulge of people who are aged between 45 and 55 and we are expecting many of them to go fairly soon.”

Siemens are certainly not alone in facing this issue. Indeed it is a problem mirrored in many other companies in many other verticals. So what can be done to resolve the problem and build a sustainable workforce for the future?

 

The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

Well of course the first thing to do is to look to engage with the next generation, something that Siemens have done through both traditional and non-traditional routes.

“We’ve gone out to the universities to sponsor students, we’ve got about 1,500 sponsors throughout the UK – it something we have to do.” Begins Coyne. However, Siemens are not just targeting graduates, they have an apprenticeship scheme that means they won’t miss out on those bright young minds that for whatever reason don’t see academia as the right path to choose.

“The other thing that we have done is that we have got 400 apprentices in the UK.” Coyne continues,  “I am told this is not enough. We were talking about taking people from the age of 13, 14 15 – it is essential. So we are trying to do our bit, we’re investing a lot of time and effort into it and it is starting to show results.”

However, the Siemens recruitment machine is far more sophisticated than just supporting and developing training programs.

“We think we are doing an OK job recruiting people” Coyne admits, “What we have been doing is we have been investing in manufacturing technology centres. These are important, as they are specialist areas which are invested in by academia, by manufacturers and by government.”

These technology centres are key to solving both the Siemens problem and that of the wider industry. By sitting in between the gap between business and academia they allow smart young minds to connect with industry without the pressure that may come from a more formal environment.

As Coyne explains “The idea of these technology centres is that on the one side you’ve got academia producing skilled engineers of many different types and on the other side you’ve got some very good manufacturers. Sometimes in between we lose things and the idea is that these catapult centres are sat there to help avoid this”

However, these centres play a deeper role in the recruitment and retention of the next generation of field engineers. They are also important to ensure that that next generation of field engineers are ready for the next generation of technology as well.

“All of our new technology is moving on, we are moving to industry 4.0.” Coyne begins “basically all the things we are trying to do is so we can get engineers to fit where this next wave of manufacturing technology is going to be”

This approach is commendably, but necessarily long sighted.

“We are talking about something that is not yet ready. It’s going to be ready in maybe 20 years but parts of it are already there.” However, the manufacturing technology centres, being co-funded by industry, education and state provide opportunities for the next generation of field engineers to start understanding and utilising tomorrows tools today.

This has two-fold importance. It ensures you are not only attracting the best minds but also that they are being readily prepared for the future.

“We need engineers that are fresh faced, fresh minds that know all about the current technology,” states Coyne. “But I’ve been out and talked to some of our graduates and asked what do you want “they said they want experience, they want to do as much as possible, learn as many skills as possible and get trained so that they can do many different things”

Getting this balance between what you and your future employees want is not an easy road but it is companies like Siemens who are investing in the future heavily today that will almost certainly be set to reap the rewards tomorrow.

 

 

The next Autumn edition of Field Service News is now out. For those who aren't subscribed to our print circulation you can download the digital edition here...

Well Change is certainly a major theme in this edition of Field Service News. In fact it seems to be permeating every inch of the industry right now.

So let’s start at the obvious point. Managing Change (or change management). All too often in our industry we talk about the benefits of implementing a new field service management system or a new mobile workforce management solution or an enterprise mobility management system or whatever we want to call it today.

We get caught up in new technologies, new acronyms and new promises of even greater productivity improvements, efficiency savings, happy staff, happy customers and a generally all round better life experience for anyone within touching distance.

How excited we all are to get away from our spread sheets and post it notes and boldly step into the twenty first century with both feet.

Yet we rarely talk about how we are going to make that leap from a to b. It’s not just a case of handing out a bunch of new devices and switching all the old ones off. Do that and you may as well have invested a fortune in a bunch of really nice looking paperweights, because without proper roll out amongst your team you can bet a pretty penny or three that at the first hurdle a huge majority of your workforce, will turn their backs on their new tools and revert back to how things were before.

[quote]I actually know of one example where an engineer who when he was given a shiny new iPad to do his work on he would still do everything on paper and then spend an extra half an hour to an hour in his van evry night completing the administration on his iPad.

Try and stop them and they will find ingenious ways of working around the new tools. Why? Despite what it may sometimes feel like it is not because they are desperately trying to make your life harder. In fact in most cases they are probably working that little bit harder themselves. Staying extra to upload the information onto the new ‘thingy’ at the end of the day.  I actually know of one example where an engineer who when he was given a shiny new iPad to do his work on he would still do everything on paper and then spend an extra half an hour to an hour in his van evry night completing the administration on his iPad. In his mind his priority was to get the job done first and then deal with the admin.

 

Had this particular organisation gone through a more thorough Change Management program then perhaps our earnest engineer could have seen that this device was as much an investment in him and making his life easier throughout the day rather than an additional duty to attend to and the poor chap could have got home for his supper on time!

One company whop absolutely got it right when it comes to Change Management is Tyco led admirably by the highly impressive Sharon Moura, VP of IT Transformation and Strategy. I’ve had the pleasure of writing a series of articles based around her work in rolling out the ServiceMax field service management solution and she has an uncanny knack of being able to translate things into very simple concepts yet simultaneously covering every inch of ground so no stone is unturned and their are minimal hiccups along the way to a successful IT implementation. You can read more about this in our feature ‘Are you ready for change’ which begins on page 18.

A different type of change is also on the cards for a number of companies including manufacturing giant Siemems. This time however the change is a looming spectre over an ageing workforce that needs a succession plan for somebody to come and taker over otherwise there could be some very serious crises as we begin to enter the second decade of this new millennium.

Siemens who predict they need to increase their existing workforce by an additional 50 field engineers by 2020 to meet current demands, yet face losing up to 100 engineers through retirement are certainly not alone in this predicament. However, they are certainly being both pro-active and innovative about finding the solutions. Having heard the excellent Martin Hotass speaking at the most recent Service Community event on this topic it is clear that they are doing everything they can to remedy the situation and in our interview with Graeme Coyne we look a little closer at what those remedies are. It is certainly an issue you should be aware of today because it will bite you hard when tomorrow comes if you don’t have plans in place like the good folk at Siemens do.

Finally as we continue to stay with the theme of Change there are plenty of changes required in some of the field service organisations that completed our recent survey into field service management standards.

Whilst there were some positives that came out of the research, especially around actually validating the benefits of real-time telematics and other elements of field service management system through some hard and fast data, there were some really quite worrying trends highlighted that suggest a real disconnect between how we judge our standards and how our customers perceive us.

In today’s world of smart phones and sat navs it’s almost impossible to not know where you are at any given time yet unbelievably 43% of companies still have staff getting lost on a regular basis. Even more unbelievable is that 5% have staff turn up at the wrong address every week! Occasionally is forgivable perhaps but a weekly occurrence is an issue that needs to be seriously addressed when your workforce are field professionals. You can find out more about this research in our main feature, which begins on page 23.

Finally if your in Amsterdam this month at either the Field Service Europe or AfterMarket conferences do come and say hello!

Download the digital edition here...