Smart deployment of service technicians

The business of laundry machines is varied and logistically demanding. In particular, large machines installed at customers require regular maintenance to enable defects to be remedied as quickly as possible. Major operators of such machines include, for example, linen rental companies, hotels, hospitals and cruise ships. The worldwide coordination of technicians is another challenge, as it is important to send out the right technician with the right skills for the tasks at hand.

The JENSEN-GROUP, a global laundry solutions provider, was one such company facing a great deal of coordination work in the back office and huge workloads related to the processing of maintenance jobs. Tasks included copying out work reports, checking the plausibility of the technician’s information, sending service confirmations to the customer, and invoicing. If information on the technicians’ reports was not obviously recognisable to the computer systems, errors could occur: This meant that spare parts were billed for incorrectly or process steps – such as sending the report to customers – were forgotten. JENSEN-GROUP wanted to eliminate the many media discontinuities and automate manual tasks where possible. The aim was to save time in the back office and reduce the error rate. At the same time, JENSEN-GROUP was looking for an efficient way to plan customer service jobs.

Trivadis set up a support solution to meet these requirements. Using web services as a basis, there is 1st level support, 2nd level support as well as 3rd level support, which is carried out in the factories. For example, if JENSEN-GROUP’s global offices receive service requests, the system automatically translates these into English from the local language. Furthermore, the customer-specific documentation for the machines and machine systems is also stored in the system and the service technician is able to access it at all times.

As the basis for these service applications, we set up Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement to gain an overview of the support process and thus improve service planning processes. The Field Service business app was introduced as part of Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement. This ensures optimum management for the deployment of service technicians. On site, the app, which can also be used offline, provides all the information a service technician needs in their day-to-day work:

• Tasks to be carried out for the customer,
• information about the customer and the corresponding contacts,
• information on previous service cases,
• information on the machines to be serviced such as specifications and serial number, as well as a documentation filed on SharePoint for the specific machine and
• standardised inspection questionnaire to be answered for quality assurance purposes.

The service technician reports the work completed in the app and can have the customer sign the work report directly on site using their mobile device. At the push of a button, a work report is then automatically created as a PDF and sent to the customer by e-mail. The back office can (but does not have to) perform plausibility checks and then approves the report for invoicing, which is automatically created in Dynamics 365 AX.

Beyond this automation, JENSEN-GROUP has now established the technical conditions required to introduce predictive maintenance with little additional effort. The sensors are installed in the machines. With data analytics in the Azure Cloud, Dynamics 365 Field Service can automatically create work orders for employees before a machine breaks down and seriously disrupts a customer’s operations.

The JENSEN-GROUP is a global laundry solution provider. It plans, develops, manufactures, installs and maintains everything from single machines and processing lines to turnkey washrooms. Its customers are textile rental suppliers, industrial laundries, central laundries and hospital and hotel laundries. The JENSEN-GROUP manufactures and supplies the entire product range via its specialist technology and service centres at laundries around the world.