planning
Transform efficiency and
customer satisfaction with
multi-resource planning
from Quintiq
7 field service challenges that make
or break your operations
As you read this, you are probably facing challenges that affect your ability to improve service levels and efficiency. Problems such as undercapacity and slow response times are difficult to anticipate, but have a critical impact on your business.
Perhaps you already have a planning system in place. If so, you’re well aware that spreadsheets, whiteboards and, indeed, most field service automation software don’t give you the insights you need to overcome your most critical planning challenges.
So how much better could you be doing?
To help you get a sense of what is possible, we’ve identified seven common planning challenges that field service companies like yours face.
As you read them, please take a moment to consider how you would tackle them.
Then compare your response with what is possible with an intelligent multi-resource planning system that integrates all your resources to give you complete business control.
SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 3
“A single system gives us
opportunities to cut driver miles
and transport costs, optimize
the geographic deployment of
kit, and react to last-minute
changes, all in real time.”
– Matthew Fell,
Executive Project Manager
SIS LIVE
The Quintiq response
Immediate scenario-based insights
into future capacity requirements
Your planners swiftly create scenarios that enable you to identify gaps between current capacity and future demand. The results show you how many field service technicians you will need, with which skills; as well as the other resources that will be required.
An accurate overview of long-term capacity requirements enables you to seize business opportunities while avoiding overstaffing.
Challenge 1
No way of determining future
capacity requirements
Your forecasting department has just told you that demand for next year is expected to rise by 20%. Several questions spring to mind. How many additional field service technicians will you need, and with which skills? How are you placed as far as other resources such as vehicles and equipment are concerned? Without answers to these questions, you have no way of closing the gap between the resources you have now and those you will need in the future. You know you’ll run into operational problems, but what can you do?
Challenge 3
Figuring out the best combination
of resources for a job
A new request comes in, and your planners start pulling together resources to fulfil it. There’s a lot to consider. What’s the best combination of personnel and equipment in the light of service level agreements, training requirements, and commitments to other customers?
As resources are planned in different systems, your planners struggle just to arrive at a feasible plan. There’s simply no time to look for the best one.
The Quintiq response
Instant visibility into all
required resources
Your planners have an instant overview of all the required resources and their availability. The system automatically highlights the best combinations based on service level agreements and other requirements.
Challenge 2
Escalating overtime costs
Your manager is asking awkward questions. He wants to know why overtime costs are escalating when employees are under utilized during working hours. You know your planners are creating the best possible schedules based on standard shift types that avoid violations of labor rules and regulations. What else can they possibly do?
The Quintiq response
Intelligent shift generation
Instead of relying on standard shifts, you easily explore how various shift types affect utilization rates. Your multi-resource planning system enables planners to add, remove, and change shift types to arrive at the best possible schedules.
Demand-driven shift generation enables you to avoid overcapacity and undercapacity, and minimize
SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 5
Challenge 4
Improving both customer
satisfaction and staff utilization
Senior management has yet another impossible demand. They want you to improve both customer satisfaction and staff utilization. You try telling them that these are conflicting goals, but you can tell they’re not listening. You have to deliver. Or else.
The Quintiq response
KPI-based optimization that
balances competing demands
Your planners effortlessly optimize decisions against all relevant KPIs. Instead of choosing between business goals, they simply assign weights to them and watch as the optimizer arrives at the optimal plan that balances competing KPIs. These plans are then fine-tuned by planners based on their soft knowledge of employee and customer preferences.
KPI-based optimization gives planners complete control over how their decisions affect competing business goals.
“We wanted a single
integrated solution for our
Dutch and international
planning activities that
would offer the intelligence
to improve our flexibility. In
this way we aim to be able to
operate in a more
customer-centric way.”
– Marcel Blinde, Director
Applus RTD Project Services
Challenge 5
Identifying the best routes among
billions of possibilities
You suspect that your routes could be improved. In fact you’re sure they can.
If planning a route for one technician with ten service requests presents a huge range of possibilities, you can’t imagine what it must be like to plan routes for all of them. How do your planners know which routes will enable field personnel to complete the most jobs in the least time? You’re pretty sure they don’t.
The Quintiq response
World-class optimization
Every single factor that affects the quality of a route - from customer requirements and time windows, to the location and availability of personnel – is considered in order to generate the best possible routes.
Powerful optimizers swiftly arrive at the best routes for even the most complex field service situations.
Supported by a multi-resource planning system, the planner has immediate insight into whether the right employees and equipment are available within the desired timeframe. All rules, regulations and constraints are automatically incorporated in the plan.
All relevant costs – such as the cost of overtime, travel time, and the cost of outsourcing orders - are considered. The job is dispatched to the field service technician’s mobile device.
(1) Planner receives and plans a service order
(such as the customer, parts required and route) on his mobile device. He updates his status to ‘job in progress’.
The technician is able to create additional service orders on the spot. Extra work that used to be done for free can now be invoiced.
on the status of the service order and any additional requests.
Any revised schedule complies fully with all relevant constraints, labor rules and regulations.
The planner knows exactly where each technician is, and can re-optimize schedules swiftly to respond to urgent requests.
Urgent requests are fielded to the most suitable technician, based on factors such as travel time, overtime and SLAs.
(3) An urgent service order comes through while the technician is still on the job.
The technician uses his mobile device to generate
(4) Technician completes the job
and field service
planning - in action
The technician receives the updated schedule immediately.
SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 7
World record holder for the vehicle
routing problem with time windows
(VRPTW)
When you choose Quintiq, you benefit from the expertise of the world record holder for the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The VRPTW is one of the most studied problems in the field of combinatorial optimization. It involves creating the best routes to get delivery vehicles from a central depot to customers who require deliveries of various quantities of a product within certain time windows. The challenge lies in finding a solution that minimizes the total number of vehicles used and distance traveled.
The solution that previously held the world record requires 90 vehicles (the optimal number) and a total distance of 39641.46. We set a new world record by uncovering a set of routes that requires 90 vehicles and a distance of only 39468.68, while respecting all time windows and vehicle capacities. This improvement of over 170 points or 0.43% is significant for an
optimization challenge that has been around for many years.
A fully integrated mobile platform
that transforms service levels
and efficiency
Your technicians use their mobile devices to receive work orders, access the information they need to complete jobs, manage spare parts, file reports, create invoices, and log hours – anytime, anywhere.
A fully integrated mobile platform enables minute-by-minute alignment between optimal schedules and the realities on the ground.
Turning mobility into a
competitive advantage
While your technicians are equipped with mobile devices, these devices aren’t integrated with your planning system. Your planners are still in the dark about delays that could affect schedules or service levels.
Another problem: You have various systems that handle time and attendance, orders for spare parts, and invoicing. As none of them are integrated with your mobile platform, your technicians are spending far too much time completing forms and job reports.
SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING & OPTIMIZATION 9
“Our top priorities are to keep our customers happy and ensure the safety of our
employees, but we also need to manage our resources with maximum efficiency.
Planning is the key to success, which means we have very high expectations for
the Quintiq solution in terms of improved resource utilization, SLA compliance,
safety, and administrative efficiency. Based on what we saw in phase one of the
project, we are confident that our expectations will be met.”
– Santi Copello, Executive Project Manager, Elektro
The Quintiq response
Intelligent decision support and
interactive optimization that keep
planners in control
A disruption doesn’t disrupt your ability to achieve business goals. The system automatically identifies the most suitable personnel based on pre-determined criteria such as skills, and re-assigns tasks.
Based on how much of the original plan has been disrupted, your planners choose where to apply optimization. Within a few minutes, a new schedule is generated that takes all the relevant rules into account and minimizes the impact of the disruption.
Interactive optimization enables planners to react swiftly to unexpected events and fine-tune plans with their soft knowledge.
Challenge 7
Mastering disruptions
Two of your field service technicians call in sick. Your planners are scrambling to reassign tasks without violating labor rules and regulations. Achieving business goals, such as minimizing travel time and overtime, is going to have to take a backseat.
Field service
planning check list
Does your field service planning and optimization solution allow you to do the following?
• Improve the utilization of resources such as employees, equipment, and vehicles
• Respond quickly and effectively to unexpected events • Improve compliance with service level agreements • Base your planning around your KPIs
• Reduce the time needed to create and revise operational plans
• Improve the quality of operational plans • Turn mobility into a competitive advantage • Avoid unnecessary investments in employees,
equipment, and vehicles
• Maximize flexibility, visibility, and control
Tip: Look for a multi-resource planning system that gives you complete business control.
The benefits described in this brochure can be found in the powerful Quintiq optimization platform. For more information on how Quintiq can help you streamline your operations, speed up response times, and lower operating costs, contact us or visit
