ARCHIVE FOR THE ‘video’ CATEGORY

Field Service News Editor-in-Chief Kris Oldland takes the opportunity to catch up with Tomasz Sinkiewicz, Comarch at the recent Field Service Medical conference shortly after he'd given a great presentation about why connectivity and not mobility was the dominant buzz word currently in the medical sector.

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount! 

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief talks exclusively to Tom De Vroy, Senior Product Evangelist, Field Service Management with IFS at the Field Service Medical conference to find out why they were involved within the Field Service Medical sector, what unique challenges he saw for field service management in the healthcare and medical sector and what key points he took away from the three day conference held in San Diego a few weeks ago.

at Field Service Medical held at Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego.

We also take a sneak peak at what to expect at this year's Field Service USA event being held in Palm Springs this April

 

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount! 

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

 

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US telecoms giant AT&T recently shared that the company has been using drones to inspect conditions of its 65,000 cellular towers across the US.

The challenge is daunting. There are millions of cell towers in the US alone, all of which need to be inspected on a regular basis.

To begin with their is the genuine issue that these cell towers tend to make very attractive birdhourses. In fact cell towers offer convenient and reasonably safe homes for nesting birds. To make even more complicated, according to US federal environmental regulations, if the nesting species happens to be endangered, then teams must leave them be.

No a mast tower inspector’s life is not an easy one.

All this is a headache for telecoms firms and inspection providers alike, simply because current processes are so laborious.

Each tower is typically several hundred feet high requiring technicians to scale the mast via rope rigging. Unsurprisingly, despite best efforts, every year people are hurt in such operations due to weather, equipment and the aforementioned birds.

 

Of course, until a technician can get a close look at the tower, there’s also little indication as to what problem they may need to fix. This means multiple trips, increased downtime and elevated personal risk.

Drones, with their high-resolution cameras, can serve as a unique tool to provide an initial inspection for the technicians.

The majority of inspections are routine and don’t require a technician to scale the tower. The ability to do this remotely with a drone greatly increases the operational efficiency of the service providers, allowing them to identify towers with issues more quickly and minimising the amount of time they spend hanging from ropes from the side of towers.

Cell towers are technically sensitive equipment, with lots of wires, transmitters, and distribution boxes.

One commonly cited concern related to using drones for inspecting towers is the risk of a collision that cuts wires or damaging equipment. Deploying a drone with obstacle avoidance, such as DJI’s Phantom 4, along with an experienced operator are vital to safe operations.

Interestingly, DJI recently partnered with US service operator Measure Aero, a specialist in technical inspection work.

It will be interesting to see how the telecoms industry will be deploying drones over the next 12 -18 months.

With a variety of use cases and substantial safety and efficiency gains to be had, it is hard not to imagine adoption, and business, will be brisk.

 

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Note: This content first featured on www.dji.com 

 

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Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief talks exclusively to Jonathan Massoud, Divisional Director, Field Service, WBR about the key topics and discussions that took place at Field Service Medical held at Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego.

We also take a sneak peak at what to expect at this year's Field Service USA event being held in Palm Springs this April

 

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Thinking of attending Field Service USA this year? Field Service News subscribers are entitled to a 25% discount! 

Field service professionals can subscribe now for free here and then simply email the subscriber benefits team on subscriber.benefits@fieldservicenews.com to get your discount code!

 

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Logistics provider UPS recently showcased a working prototype of a drone solution that launches from the top of a delivery truck. The test which was conducted in collaboration with drone-maker Workhorse echoes a proposed means of using drones within a delivery mechanism suggested by Ralph Rio, A Research Director with the ARC group which Field Service News reported on back in December 2013 whereby drones are used to augmented existing delivery drivers capabilities whilst they are in the field rather than deliver packages straight from the depot.

UPS believe that sending drones to make deliveries from package cars could bolster efficiency in their network by reducing miles driven across their delivery route and whilst the test was for residential delivery, a similar approach could potentially be adapted for delivery of parts to field service technicians - particularly if combined with other technology such as the location based services offered by organisations such as Glympse. 

 

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Paul Whitelam, VP Product Marketing, ClickSoftware answers questions put to him by the audience of a Field Service News webinar on Cloud computing and it's role in field service management.

Questions include:

• How do you feel about transferring data between third party specialists and how moving to the Cloud may facilitate that?
• You mentioned briefly in the webinar the additional computation powers of the Cloud - would you be able to explain exactly how that works in details (but please use layman's terms)
• Is there any particular type of organisation moving to the Cloud?
• Security aside - is there any other reason why a company would not want to move to the Cloud? [/unordered_list]

The full webinar itself explored data from over three years worth of research into the topic of Cloud computing as a platform for field service management systems, with Whitelam and Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News discussing the key findings of the data and exploring the trends it reveals.

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To download a copy of the full webinar please click here

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In the video below Tash Quinn, Product Manager with eBecs gives us an overview of what we can expect from their latest webinar being held on the 31st January 2017.

The webinar will cover:

• Ensure that your field service technicians are prepared with the right information and equipment to get the job done right the first time, on time.
• Create efficiencies so that more work orders can be completed with more satisfied customers, allowing your business to grow.
• Forge lasting and trusted customer relationships, building new business through positive word of mouth recommendations.

 

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http://ebecs.wistia.com/medias/ozk3pu81s8?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

 

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To join this webinar click here for the registration page

 

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Having undertaken a detailed research project together assessing the use of IoT in field service and also the relationship between IOT and the growing trend of servitization, Field Service News and Gartner field service management magic quadrant leader ServiceMax delivered a webinar exploring the research findings.

You can find links to download the full webinar and the related white paper below but here as a taster is a brief section of the Q&A held at the end of the webinar featuring Patrice Eberline, VP Global Customer Transformation and Kris Oldland Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News

 

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Click here to access the research report

 

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Click here to access the webinar

 

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Field service management software providers Coresystems showed us a glimpse into the not too distant future, bringing together field service and consumer IoT.

As smart homes become more prevalent one of the key hubs leading the way in integrating a variety of disparate smart devices is Amazon's Echo which features voice controlled personal assistant Alexa.

Commands such as 'Alexa switch off the downstairs lights' or 'Alexa turn the heating up to 68 degrees' allow the Echo to control the heating lighting, security and much more in your smart home.

And now as demonstrated in this video by Philipp Emmenegger, Deputy CEO and Head of Sales EMEA with Coresystems Alexa can schedule a field service call for you as well. 

In the brief demonstration above, filmed at Field Service Europe held in Amsterdam last week, Emmenegger is able to schedule a service call on the day of his choice simply by telling Alexa "Alexa, tell coresystems to schedule a service call'.

After a brief exchange a day is confirmed and we can see the appointment added into a dispatch schedule.

Of course, further development would be required to make this a solution rather than just a gimmick, for example identifying exactly what it is I want the engineer to come and fix, however, it is an interesting glimpse into how we could be arranging our field service schedules in the not so distant future...

 

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