Work Package 1 - The Assessment of Current Telematics Ability

4.2.1 S

A

The purpose of work package 1 is to assess the sponsor company’s telematics ability to support PSS. Literature reviews were conducted to assemble all the relevant knowledge and industrial practices that relate to the subject domain, and these were used to identify guidelines for the assessment process. The RE was transferred temporarily to the new JCB Customer Experience Centre (CEC) that aims to operate as a first response centre for global JCB machines, by processing captured telemetry data from JCB products, as well as capturing customer feedback through customer satisfaction surveys. The outcome of work package 1 has largely contributed to the refinement of the EngD project research direction and methodology by identifying the research gaps of both academia and industry. The results of the research within work package 1 are:

1.) Literature review of PSS and customer satisfaction

3.) An assessment of the current telematics capabilities in the sponsoring company

The publication of a conference paper entitled (Appendix V) :

Ng, F., Harding, J. and Rosamond, E., 2012. A Customers’ Satisfaction Based Framework for Continuous Development of PSS. Proceedings of the 4th CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems, Tokyo, Japan, November 8th - 9th, 2012, pp. 239-244

4.2.2 R

1

The main tasks for work package 1 were conducting a literature review and gaining practical experience by working within the relevant department at the sponsor company hence the work followed an observational descriptive research methodology as mentioned in section 2.4.1.

The literature reviews on PSS and customer satisfaction provided critical background knowledge, and understanding which are essential to thoroughly assess the effectiveness of the sponsor’s current PSS system. Working within the CEC also provided understanding of the company’s business strategy and processing customer satisfaction survey data, which is largely qualitative, gave further knowledge and understanding with the intention of future product improvement. In addition, during work package 1, the RE met with key managers from other functional departments and gained valuable knowledge and understanding on how the utilisation level of telemetry data might be increased to support critical tasks for the improvement of the PSS. Three main static data sets, non-real time data, were identified as already being regularly collected and these are related to product performance, product usage, and feedback from customers as mentioned in section 1.3 in Figure 1-5 as service & warranty data, sales/marketing data and dealers’ data.

4.2.2.1 Data sets

The service & warranty data set has the largest amount of data and is the only quantitative data type among the three. Although it is a combination of data from both service and warranty activities, as these both originate in the same department, and have been used in conjunction with each other, they are considered as a single data set in this thesis. Warranty data consists of data such as machine serial numbers, failed part serial numbers, machine failed hours, service codes, cost of claim etc. Service data mainly consists of a verbal description of the machine, issued by the dealer and recommendations from the JCB technical specialist to the dealers on how the issue could be resolved. Both data sets contain a specific code known as Diagnostic Trouble Code (DTC), which is defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) standard J2012, and The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard BS ISO 15031-2:2010, as codes that are associated with a malfunction reported from the electrical/electronic On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) systems of motor vehicles. With appropriate background knowledge of the structure adopted by the ISO/SAE standard and the OEMs’ proprietary DTCs standard, a service technician can decipher any DTCs to assist in the fault finding process. It is apparent that such knowledge is not centralised nor converted for the use of PSS due to the complexity of the sponsoring company’s product range. As a result the CEC staff have little training and understanding to enable them to effectively use the telemetry data for PSS purposes. Furthermore, not all real time data generated on the products are being captured from the product’s CAN bus and broadcast back to the CEC. The risks involved in using an incomplete set of telemetry data and conducting an unfair assessment of the sponsor’s PSS capability are very high and therefore the research strategy was changed and the assessment was conducted directly from a product’s CAN bus, see Appendix A & Appendix B for further details.

4.2.2.2 Customer satisfaction surveys

The aim of CEC is to carry out responsive actions based on the data and information captured from the telematics system and surveys, however the lack of standard operation procedures (SOPs) and lack of understanding of the nature of the data, prevents CEC staff from effectively carrying out their daily routine. Therefore, as part of this work package a data processing system was developed for analysing questionnaire results, and this enabled the customer satisfaction centre staff to publish reports with vital feedback for divisions, enriching the sponsor’s knowledge repository of the customer needs, product performance etc.

The system was developed for the Microsoft Excel environment and is designed to be fully automatic, so that the calculations generated help the company to identify and understand areas of customer’s needs. Details can be found in Appendix C and Appendix D. Another part of the project was to investigate and define the meaning of customer satisfaction, and most importantly to understand how to measure it.

4.2.3 K

F

/

There are several key findings and outcomes from work package 1 that contribute to this thesis and determined work package 2’s objective and the structure of work package 2. The key findings are as follows:

1.) JCB’s telemetry system does not capture all the real time data generated by their products.

2.) CEC staff and service specialists have little understanding of the origin and creation of telemetry data.

3.) There are inefficient associations of DTCs in the current service protocol 4.) There is a lack of telemetric coverage in the products’ key systems

The findings of work package 1 concluded that the company's telemetry data set is insufficient to match the demand for real time data to support a PSS. It is evident that the sponsor is still within the adoption period, and working to accept and understand the value of having telematics on their products since their introduction in January 2011. The current telemetry data set is a filtered version of all CAN bus data from the products, as a result of cost reduction on data extraction by General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). No records were found regarding the filtering criteria, and a complete list of CAN bus data could not be found in the initial investigation. However it is clear that the CAN bus does not contain data that is generated from the products’ hydraulic systems, even though this is one of the key systems of the sponsor’s products. Yet hydraulics sensors were found on products’ schematics, which suggest that hydraulic related data do exist but are not currently being broadcast by the telemetry system. As a result, it was decided that the infrastructure should be investigated further, particularly regarding the generation of dynamic data within the CAN Bus network on products and the value of the data in the context of PSS should also be assessed in work package 2.

The outcomes from work package 1 are the results of research and investigations into the company’s historical data sets, i.e. static data, for PSS. A data analysis procedure was developed to filter out and prioritise the customers that need responding to. The new procedure includes other relevant background information such as service and warranty records, machine models, duty etc. to give a detailed view of the customers and help staff to better understand and deal with the customer feedback. The aim of the new procedure is to clearly present feedback data to various departments, in the context of the customers’

expectation and perception. This work was also written up and presented as Conference Paper 1 – A customers’ satisfaction based framework for continuous development of PSS,

framework that uses customer satisfaction as a major driver towards the state of “total contentment”, to measure performance and develop PSS.

4.2.4 S

This work package was conducted primarily as an action research project, following Altichter’s cyclical nature of the action research process. Literature on the research subject was reviewed and the company’s PSS capability was examined and reflected on. Although, the company’s telemetry structure was not strongly focused on PSS implementation, evidence suggested that real time data was being used for fault finding procedures. Telemetric data captured from the machines being used by customers was examined, and it became clear that the level of understanding required for PSS did not exist due to the complexity of the market and machine applications. Table 4-1 summarises the findings in work package 1.

Key Findings Descriptions The overall

Structural

Requirement for PSS

An effective PSS requires OEMs to run a product monitoring program that collect vital real time product data for diagnosis for faults or any undesired condition. A data/information/knowledge system will also be required to store and feed records to support product monitoring and diagnosis.

Table 4-1: Work package 1 Key Findings

4.3 WORK PACKAGE 2 – THE ASSESSMENT OF CURRENT