Field Service Magazine Q4 2017

Stories from the Field Service Community Leveraging the technology that is field born, field tested

Published by ServiceMax from GE Digital

Issue No. 5 | Winter 2017

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FIELD BORN, FIELD TESTED

ServiceMax from GE Digital Named a Leader 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management Go to ServiceMax.com to access the report

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LETTER FROM DAVID MILAM

Dear Reader, The ServiceMax product line has an amazing community of raving fans comprised of customers, partners and industry analyst advocates. This community is at the heart of our business and is what drives us toward excellence in everything we do, including our annual field service conference series, Maximize.

This year, we once again took Maximize on the road with stops in Las Vegas, Tokyo and Berlin.

When the tour ends in Berlin in November, we will have attracted more than 1,500 attendees who are just as passionate about the future of the field service industry as we are.

The theme across all three events: Field Born, Field Tested.

It’s a theme that certainly resonates with everyone at ServiceMax, from GE Digital. We were born in the field, made for the field, and tested in the field. Field service is what we do. It’s all we do. It’s a passion rooted in the hard work and ingenuity that field service professionals—from technicians in the field to managers back at the office—exhibit around the world day in and day out. We have tremendous respect for the field service community—and for the important work you do.

Field Born, Field Tested is also a theme woven throughout this magazine. In the pages that follow, you’ll read about the hard work, enthusiasm and creativity that field service pros display every time they clock in.

By telling their stories, we want to celebrate the stunning diversity of work that women and men do every day to keep the world running, from homes and hospitals to the international space station. (Don't miss the story about how companies like Coca-Cola and Boeing are giving Google Glass a second chance in the field.)

Field service truly makes a difference in people’s lives. And we’re committed to serving the pros who make those differences. It’s a mission that the rest of GE Digital shares, too. It might be the world’s most innovative industrial manufacturer, but GE is also an early mover in recognizing the importance of field service to a company’s bottom line.

Our customers are already seeing value from our relationship with GE Digital, and there’s more to come. Don’t miss the Q&A with Amit Jain, our senior director of project management, for a glimpse into how the ServiceMax product line, from GE Digital, is expanding and further helping our customers succeed.

The stories in this issue tell a few of those success stories—and reflect what it means to be Field Born, Field Tested.

David Milam Chief Marketing Officer, ServiceMax from GE Digital

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WHAT’S INSIDE

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DOMINO’S SERVICE REVOLUTION: GREATER FREEDOM, GREATER REVENUE

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WHY “SERVICE CHAMPIONS” ARE THE KEY TO UNLOCKING REVENUE

A U.K. industrial printing manufacturer’s

BEYOND THE PRODUCT SALE

decision to give its techs more autonomy

Every company is a service company—

pays off.

but can yours offer lucrative advanced

By Janine Milne

services?

By Derek Korte

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READY, SET, GO! HOW TO BE A SERVICE TRANSFORMATION CHANGER ServiceMax’s VP of global customer

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GE DIGITAL’S ASSET PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MEETS FIELD

transformation sets service leaders on a

SERVICE

path to service transformation.

ServiceMax’s Amit Jain on an acronym—

By Patrice Eberline

APM—that should be music to every service leader’s ears.

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HOW TOPCON JAPAN INCREASED EFFICIENCY, PROFITABILITY WITH MODERN FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT An optical equipment maker eyes a modern way to manage its service operation.

By Nevin Thompson

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By Derek Korte THE LATEST MUST-HAVE SERVICE TOOL FOR THE INDUSTRIAL IOT? NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION SOFTWARE For industrial firms, NLG software provides a real-time equipment health check.

By Jane Irene Kelly

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GOOGLE GLASS GETS A SECOND GO, THIS TIME IN THE FIELD

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STRUGGLING TO HIRE, ONE HVAC FIRM ROLLS OUT ITS OWN TRAINING CENTER

Companies like GE, Coca-Cola and Boeing

A San Diego HVAC firm meets the talent

put Google’s latest version of Glass through

gap head-on with a training and recruitment

its paces in field service.

boot camp.

By Andrew Zaleski

By Kris Carber

FOR QANTAS PILOTS, FLIGHT DATA IS NOW A TAP AWAY

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DESCHUTES IS BREWING THE PERFECT PINT WITH THE IOT

A powerful new cockpit tool puts engine

This popular craft brewery nudges tradition

performance and fuel consumption data in

with an IoT-connected production setup.

the hands of the pilots.

By Chris Morris

By GE Reports

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PACKAGING FRIM NICKLIN GOES BIG ON TECH-ENABLED SERVICES They used to sell boxes. Now they sell packaging-as-a-service.

By Andrew Thompson

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Into The Diamond Mine A Field Service Transformation Handbook for Executives

Patrice Eberline's first book, “A Diamond in the Rough,” stepped into the world of service potential with an introduction to the domain itself. “Into the Diamond Mine” explores these themes further, looking beyond the basics and seeking to show impact, opportunity, and paths to true service transformation—definitively and positively affecting the services organization, and in many cases, the company as a whole.

Get your copy today, visit servicemax.com/diamondmine 3

STORIES FROM THE FIELD

JANINE MILNE

DOMINO’S SERVICE REVOLUTION: GREATER FREEDOM, GREATER REVENUE With its "Step Change in Service" program, Domino Printing Sciences has found that it pays to give technicians more autonomy on service calls.

Training technicians to offer customers more than reactive service has proven to be highly profitable for Domino Printing Sciences, resulting in a significant amount of new service-generated leads annually.

It's all part of a new service approach, called "Step Change in Service." The global printing firm— headquartered in Cambridge, England—makes industrial printers for large-scale manufacturing jobs, such as putting sell-by dates on cans. And in 2014, it launched the new service program in Europe and North America. Today, the program has significantly transformed how the company provides field service worldwide.

“The idea was to give much more autonomy to our service technicians so they could become site managers for Domino equipment rather than just 4

go in on a reactive service job," explains Russell Jacobs, business analyst for service at Domino.

As "site managers," technicians have more freedom to check entire sites, not just the individual machines they were sent to fix. More autonomy allows them to evaluate all equipment in the production lines, making sure that cables and brackets are working properly. They also check that the ink store is not only up to date, but that older stock is used before newer ink. And they can proactively carry out full site audits, checking and managing consumables.

An additional aim of Domino's "Step Change in Service" program is to reduce the number of service visits. It's faster and more convenient to fix a customer's problem remotely via the telephone than it is to send one of the company's

Russell Jacobs Business Analyst for Service, Domino

“We can measure everybody and what they’re doing,” Jacobs says.

“We can follow best practices and roll that out throughout the world very quickly. It gives us a full 360-degree view of the entire business, and ServiceMax has helped facilitate that."

500 service techs across the globe. The company's international workforce already covers a lot of ground maintaining equipment for some of the world’s most well-known consumer brands.

“We try to fix as many customer problems as possible by phone rather than visiting in person.

About 70 percent on average are phone fixes, which means we need to visit customers a lot less often than we used to," Jacobs says.

One key to the success of Step Change was the implementation of ServiceMax in 2014, which bolstered technicians' mobile toolkits.

With ServiceMax, Domino's techs can access ServiceMax through their iPads to find or input customer information, even offline. Previously, technicians needed to be online to update details, and it was sometimes difficult to find a signal in customers' vast factories.

Building on its initial success in Europe and North America, Domino has rolled out the Step Change program and ServiceMax in India, China, Mexico, Dubai and other countries.

With so much cultural change, as well as the massive worldwide ServiceMax rollout, the key now, says Jacobs, is “playing catch up" with some of ServiceMax's features that Domino has been too busy to utilize.

“Within the next five years, the ability to capture data coming into the system while using AI to start detecting problems before equipment fails will be a boon to our customers," Jacobs says of Domino's service roadmap.

"Oh no! I think I left my wallet on top of one of them!"

“We can measure everybody and what they’re doing,” Jacobs says. “We can follow best practices and roll that out throughout the world very quickly. It gives us a full 360-degree view of the entire business, and ServiceMax has helped facilitate that."

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PERSPECTIVES

PATRICE EBERLINE

READY, SET, GO! HOW TO BE A SERVICE TRANSFORMATION GAME CHANGER

WE ARE IN AN AGE OF TECHNOLOGICAL ACCELERATION From the introduction of new technologies like personal navigation systems, 3D printing, and self-driving cars, to new ways of being social and new methods of buying and selling (Apple Pay), the world has changed significantly over 20 years.

We have seen businesses and even whole industries radically morph into newer, better, and more customer-centric partners to their customers. Think of Uber’s disruption to the taxi industry, or the introduction of video streaming services that have completely changed the way we consume entertainment. Consider for a moment

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your mobile phone. From a pure computing-power perspective, what you likely have in your pocket possesses roughly 2.7 times the processing power of the 1985 Cray-2 supercomputer—and has more processing power than guidance computers used in the early Apollo missions! Every one of us has adopted these new technologies in some way.

So, what does all of this cool technology have to do with field service? Quite a bit, actually. For years, service took a back seat to other organizations (sales, R&D, and so on), watching as others received the attention, kudos, and investment dollars needed to grow and succeed. That is changing. Customers are pushing business into a new world, with new rules.

“Better, faster, cheaper” has morphed into “remove the risk from me and help my business to succeed.”

“Better, faster, cheaper” has morphed into “remove the risk from me and help my business to succeed."

That shift points revenue growth and customer loyalty directly at service, and gives service leaders opportunities they’ve never before seen. The technological tipping points of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are positioning the service organization to be a true transformational game changer. We are now sitting squarely in a strong position, and with one of the best use cases to take advantage of all that IIoT can provide—data, information, intelligence and, ultimately, insights—that will allow service departments to serve customers more completely.

Service keeps the world running, and it is doing so in more ways each and every day. With the adoption of sensor technology and machine-tomachine communication, equipment and assets in industries across the board can connect not only to each other, but also to the service organization, providing rich pools of data on performance and health. More importantly, this is not just more of the same.

This new world of connected assets will allow us to see things differently, and identify patterns and trends that we simply couldn’t see before. We will be better able to answer the questions that support core service value propositions. Why and when do assets need preventive maintenance?

What is the health of other assets at a plant, and how should preventive maintenance efforts be most efficiently scheduled in order to guarantee

the highest uptime and performance? How can we troubleshoot, and even resolve, issues remotely, without the need for a truck roll? What other valueadd services can we develop to further remove risk from our customers’ businesses?

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that most of us spoke of IoT and IIoT in a very futuristic fashion, without tangible strategies or plans in place to capitalize on opportunities. We must change that approach, starting today. By not doing so, we risk our very viability, as our competition uncovers and claims new business models, value propositions, and even markets. Yesterday, cloud and mobile were the “next big things” that field service was facing. Today, they are literally table stakes in the drive towards competitive advantage.

Tomorrow, predictive analytics, machine learning, and outcome-based value propositions will drive dominance in our markets.

In the future, we will all be more connected than ever imagined. Products, suppliers, customers, and the entire operations chain will be connected in order to provide the customer with game-changing experience and service. The timing is right and the potential is huge. The technological tipping point is upon us and our customers are expecting more.

Be relentless. Strive to be original. Focus on your customers and their business propositions. Be transformative. Be a game changer.

Adapted from Field Service Digital.

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STORIES FROM THE FIELD

NEVIN THOMPSON

HOW TOPCON JAPAN INCREASED EFFICIENCY, PROFITABILITY WITH MODERN FIELD SERVICE MANAGEMENT Topcon, a leading manufacturer of optical equipment and precision measurement systems and technologies, wanted to turn its service delivery into a profit center. But first, the Japan-based company had to figure out how to more efficiently manage a complicated patchwork of systems for tracking customer requests, warranties and other processes.

"In the past, our teams used a paper-based system to input data into CRM and service management systems scattered across the enterprise," says Yuichi Yamauchi, senior manager of research and development in the engineering support department at Topcon. "As a result, it was difficult to pull information in a timely fashion."

The company has produced surveying equipment since its 1932 founding, and after WWII it advanced into the field of ophthalmological equipment, which remains Topcon's core business.

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The company has expanded those operations worldwide through M&A and alliances, and has also developed construction machinery control technology, precision GPS receivers, precision agriculture, and mobile control technology.

Topcon's ophthalmology devices are used for examinations, diagnosis and treatment, as well as for refraction and eyeglass lens processing at thousands of locations, including clinics, hospitals, and eyewear retail stores all over Japan.

"In our eye care business alone, we employ about 40 service technicians throughout Japan," Yamauchi says. "Until recently, we used a variety of systems to track service requests."

EYEING A MORE AGILE SERVICE OPERATION In the past, Topcon technicians would travel to eye care customers such as optometry clinics and retail eyeglass outlets to compile reports and service requests by hand. Service techs would then travel back to their service centers and laboriously enter their handwritten notes into Topcon's service management system.

But with thousands of devices to service and thousands of warranties to manage throughout Japan, relying on a variety of different service management systems wasn't sustainable.

It impacted technicians' responsiveness and productivity, and it also made it more difficult for the company to track repairs and warranty coverage and to determine the status of devices being serviced, Yamauchi says.

On top of all that, as devices sent back for service traveled along stops during the servicing

process, the team— from field service to service company or manufacturing company—would spend time entering or retrieving information. All the while, Topcon had to demonstrate compliance with stringent medical device regulations in order to keep track of when and how devices were serviced.

Yuichi Yamauchi Research & Development, Senior Manager, Topcon

"If we have to deal with a variety of systems, it's not only a loss in terms of time, it also adds additional costs to our process," Yamauchi says.

"We needed not only a field service management solution for our eye care business in Japan, but one we could scale across our global businesses as well."

In 2015, the company decided to standardize its Japanese service operation with ServiceMax, a decision that has helped Topcon improve its service delivery.

"We’ve been able to improve our service lead time by 39 percent," Yamauchi says. "Topcon’s American operations reported a 10 percent increase in service revenue."

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“With ServiceMax, it's easier to track warranties and devices that have been sent back for service,” he explains. ”All interactions and requests are kept on record in one single place, as well as how they were followed up.

It's now possible for us to easily share all of this information with everyone on the team.”

EARLY SUCCESSES FUEL FUTURE EXPANSION PLANS As Topcon continues to expand around the world, the next task for Yamauchi and his team is to determine the best way to incorporate ServiceMax into the company's worldwide operations.

"We need to help increase efficiency and productivity of our distributors," says Yamauchi.

"For example, we'd like to know what's going on in Europe as soon as possible, but there are differences in service procedures from region to region that make sharing information hard."

Every aspect of service delivery can now be tracked by just one service management system, Yamauchi says.

"With ServiceMax, it's easier to track warranties and devices that have been sent back for service," he explains. "All interactions and requests are kept on record in one single place, as well as how they were followed up. It's now possible for us to easily share all of this information with everyone on the team."

ServiceMax, he says, helps reconcile these difference to ensure that everything related to service delivery is tracked within Topcon's global service management system.

The goal is continued global growth, Yamauchi says, and by improving the responsiveness, productivity and profitability of service delivery, ServiceMax is helping Topcon do just that.

Adapted from Field Service Digital. Images courtesy of Topcon.

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PERSPECTIVES

WHY “SERVICE CHAMPIONS” ARE THE KEY TO UNLOCKING REVENUE BEYOND THE PRODUCT SALE Interview by Derek Korte, Field Service Digital

PROFESSORS WOLFGANG ULAGA (ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY) AND CHRISTIAN KOWALKOWSKI (SWEDEN'S LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY AND FINLAND'S HANKEN SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS) HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU: EVERY COMPANY IS A SERVICE COMPANY “The question," Ulaga says, "is whether there are opportunities to grow beyond fundamental services.”

Fresh off the release of their book, Service Strategy in Action, which examines how industrial companies grow through service, the pair sat down with Field Service Digital to talk about what it is that separates the service contenders from the pretenders.

Field Service Digital: Have we reached an inflection point where industrial companies generally understand the value of service, even if they're not yet offering them?

Ulaga: Yes and no. One company we're researching manufactures complex devices. The company continues to grow its service offerings, yet there's

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still an internal push to grow the product side of the business and shelve services for a later stage.

Even today, many companies look to the product space to grow their businesses and push services to the back burner. It's true that there's been a lot of discussion within firms about the fundamental benefits of service, but many companies just aren't ready for that journey.

How can a company determine whether it’s ready to begin that journey—or whether providing services is right for its business?

Ulaga: It's important to note that every company is a service company. Some companies are only involved in basic services to enable product sales, often called lifecycle services or after-sales services.

In our opinion, “after-sales services" is a dangerous term. If you define the activity you do as being after sales, you immediately limit the service activity and convey the wrong message to your own employees.

The question is whether there are opportunities to grow beyond those fundamental services. Some companies never move beyond basic services.

Others make inroads into adjacent areas, such as asset-efficiency services or consulting and training services. With the growing interest in IoT, we also see some firms growing in services based on data and analytics. Only a few companies reach beyond those services into complex customer solutions.

Ulaga: One strategy is to think about turning free services into fee services. There are many services activities—including inventory holding, prototyping, monitoring or training—that provide value to customers but are never invoiced. Think about using these low-hanging-fruit opportunities to demonstrate how the company can improve profitability now by charging for these services, instead of just giving them away.

Let's talk about change management. How can companies change their cultures to accept— and even emphasize—services?

There's clearly a lot of internal inertia that companies must overcome. But how do companies convince customers to buy unfamiliar services?

Kowalkowski: “The most important factor is having service champions with top management support to spearhead these initiatives.

You can't change a company’s DNA overnight, so start with a small group that has a vision and the power to drive service initiatives.

It's also critical that companies truly understand their customers’ businesses. Too often, companies focus on the technical possibilities rather than on how services can support and improve the customer's competitiveness.”

Ulaga: This shift is a major strategic initiative for most companies. A lot of companies underestimate that, which leads to frustrations.

This isn't just a minor marketing gimmick where companies dream up a few service offers and then send salespeople out to sell them. It might be technically feasible to offer remote monitoring, for example, but is that what customers need in a given market or segment?

Ulaga: Customers often aren't the biggest resisters to such initiatives. The biggest resistance usually comes from within the company, especially from the sales organization. Service is one area where sales teams need to practice value-based selling—and that requires intimate knowledge of your customers. How well do they understand customers' businesses? Do they really understand how they make money? Can the company add value, whether cost efficiencies or productivity gains, through services? Companies that struggle tend to not have that intimate knowledge.

"It sure looks like you've been trying to fix it yourself."

Are there quick wins that service champions can seize to build momentum?

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS TO WATCH

AMIT JAIN

GE DIGITAL’S ASSET PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MEETS FIELD SERVICE Interview by Derek Korte, Field Service Digital

IT’S BEEN LESS THAN A YEAR SINCE GE DIGITAL ACQUIRED SERVICEMAX, BUT SERVICE FIRMS ARE ALREADY EXPERIENCING THE BENEFITS

Amit Jain Senior Director of Product Management, ServiceMax from GE Digital

Amit Jain, senior director of product management at ServiceMax, sheds light on one way the two companies are working together to improve service: An integration with GE Digital’s asset performance management (APM) capabilities helps service firms understand the data that their connected machines generate, and, crucially, prioritize maintenance efforts.

Field Service Digital: It’s hard to keep up with service technology terms. Can you briefly explain what GE Digital and ServiceMax mean by “asset performance management” (APM) and “field service management” (FSM)?

Jain: APM is a system for assets. It gives companies a way to monitor asset performance and use and apply that information to determine both the risk of downtime and the costs associated with mitigating that risk.

FSM, on the other hand, is a system for people. It allows companies to

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identify the correct people, with the correct skills and parts, who can show up at the correct times to fix equipment in the field.

Why is it important for these two systems to play nicely together?

APM and FSM is a perfect marriage because we now have an opportunity to close the automation gap in service. Maintenance recommendations can automatically generate work orders in ServiceMax so that problems get fixed quickly, or even proactively. But that’s not all. Asset service history within ServiceMax is fed back into the APM system, creating a feedback loop. The APM system can factor in service history information— previous failure information, which parts were swapped out, frequency of break-fix issues—to the performance and usage data it’s already monitoring.

What’s in it for service organizations?

The biggest benefit is that APM puts maintenance activities in context. Companies can prevent unplanned downtime if they send a crew to inspect the same asset every day, but that’s prohibitively expensive. APM allows companies to do those inspections virtually. Equipment might appear to be running correctly, but analytics could detect an anomaly that increases the chance of failure. That analysis—that data—justifies sending a team to inspect or maintain the equipment.

Isn’t IoT-connected equipment already capable of generating and analyzing loads of data?

Traditional IoT platform solutions on the market focus heavily on connecting assets and ingesting data, but they fall short in assessing the risk of failure and the maintenance cost. Those elements are critical for equipment operators to prioritize what, if any, action should be taken. That’s why it makes so much sense to add this APM asset strategy framework to FSM.

Is that capability out of reach for most service organizations?

You don’t necessarily have to be a large organization with deep pockets (though deep pockets never hurt!). But integrating APM with field service is perfect in scenarios where the cost to maintain equipment is high. APM helps organizations to prioritize their maintenance activities and stop overspending on existing maintenance. The integration with ServiceMax ensures that they follow through on the execution of their asset management strategy.

What’s possible today? What’s coming in, say, five years?

Today, APM and its sophisticated analytics can send alerts to inspect equipment before it fails, or even to skip planned maintenance because there’s little rise of failure. But in five years, this technology could end time-based maintenance once and for all. Not only will equipment be connected and the performance monitored, but companies will also be able to consolidate information on all of their machines to build an analytics database. That will enable true predictive maintenance. Inspections and maintenance activities will be scheduled dynamically based on the asset performance analysis, so companies won’t need to manually adjust their preventative maintenance plans.

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS TO WATCH

JANE IRENE KELLY

THE LATEST MUST-HAVE SERVICE TOOL FOR THE INDUSTRIAL IOT? NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION SOFTWARE. FOR 21ST-CENTURY FIELD SERVICE, THE INDUSTRIAL INTERNET OF THINGS (IIOT) IS A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING—AND WHAT IT'S GIVING IS DATA, MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF IT As even more industrial companies connect their physical assets to the internet, they’re finding that they need effective tools to harness the reams of data flowing from the IIoT. Natural language generation (NLG) technology, an application of artificial intelligence, is becoming an invaluable tool to help industrial companies get the most value from their operational data.

Service is one area where that data is already making an impact. NLG software allows service teams to analyze equipment performance data and make actionable decisions on when and how to service that equipment.

A REAL-TIME HEALTH CHECK NLG software extracts relevant information from raw and complex data sets, like sensor data from wind turbines or aircraft engines, and repackages it into an easy-to-understand narrative format.

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But the real challenge with NLG is delivering a narrative that’s not only based on meaningful business insights, but also reads like a subjectmatter expert composed it.

To create that narrative, NLG software needs input from the experts who build and service the equipment in question—everything from what sensors are called and how they relate to each other to what constitutes an actionable event.

Additionally, the narrative must be accessible to “critical business users who do not have a data science or software development background, but are relied on for operational decision-making," says Benjamin Decio, CEO of NarrativeWave.

Since 2014, NarrativeWave has developed IIoT software that combines employees' expertise with operational data to create an “evolving knowledge base" of how a company's critical industrial assets should be operated, maintained and evaluated.

“We make it easy for engineers to input, document and share what's in their heads,” Decio explains.

“We help them, often for the first times in their careers, to be proactive with decision-making instead of wasting time reacting to redundant alerts and alarms.”

CUTTING THROUGH THE INDUSTRIAL NOISE NarrativeWave's platform dramatically shortens the process of reviewing the thousands of alerts and alarms (many of which are false-positives) sent to service centers from industrial machines.

It can take hours for employees to manually sift through IIoT data, diagnose issues and report their findings and recommendations.

NarrativeWave slashes this process down to approximately 30 seconds, while auto-generating an easy-to-understand report on the root cause of an alarm and how to address it.

General Electric is among the companies that NarrativeWave is helping to manage the constant barrage of alarm and alert “noise” coming from its industrial machines. GE Power's Monitoring & Diagnostic Team was closely involved in the initial development of NarrativeWave’s software. Since

then, NarrativeWave has completed two pilot programs with GE. The company is currently in discussions with other GE business units about using its platform.

ADVANCED ANALYTICS IN REAL TIME To benefit from the IIoT, companies like GE that build and manage critical assets (such as gas turbines and aircraft engines) must be able to manage their operational data and generate actionable business insights from that data in real time. Automated decision-making, increased workforce productivity, reduced field service costs, and better customer service and engagement are just some of the potential gains afforded by NLG software's insights.

Decio says that companies are using NarrativeWave's platform to “build a foundation for more robust analytics” that can help them find ways to improve equipment health and management, prevent critical equipment failures and downtime, and ensure that service-level agreements with customers are met.

While NarrativeWave's technology can automate root-cause analysis, auto-generate service recommendations, and reduce human error by 25 to 30 percent, according to chief technology officer Romain Wurtz, it is by no means a replacement for human experts.

Companies still need people to build and service industrial equipment. NLG is just another tool in their increasingly tech-studded toolkits.

Adapted from Field Service Digital. Images courtesy of NarrativeWave.

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TECHNOLOGY TRENDS TO WATCH

ANDREW ZALESKI

GOOGLE GLASS GETS A SECOND GO, THIS TIME IN THE FIELD A NEW GENERATION OF AUGMENTED REALITY DEVICES ARE REVOLUTIONIZING HOW TECHNICIANS WORK At the General Electric Aviation facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, factory technicians are accustomed to working from paper instructions when performing engine maintenance. Recently, though, they've traded in their paper manuals for digital instructions via Google Glass.

What was a consumer flop for the search engine giant in 2013 is roaring back in 2017, rebranded as Glass Enterprise Edition, a version designed exclusively for factory workers, warehouse employees and field technicians.

Technicians at GE Aviation receive instructions directly in their lines of sight on headworn Glass EE devices, accessing real-time guidance on the tasks they're performing, instead of relying on books or manuals. During a summer pilot program, GE found

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that using Glass EE increased productivity by as much as 12 percent for both experienced and new workers. “We're helping connect workers to the information they need to do their jobs effectively without having to take their hands off the work they're performing," says Aaron Tate, vice president of client success at Upskill, a Washington, D.C.based company that develops the software that big companies use to deploy augmented reality devices like Glass for hands-on work.

Beyond increasing productivity on the factory floor, devices like Glass have huge potential to transform service work at remote sites away from

expert guidance. Not only can service techs use the headworn displays to digitally access the most up-to-date technical manuals—the technology also lets them livestream what they're viewing via the device's camera, giving a bird's-eye view to any experts whose help they might need to complete a project.

Upskill's software, called Skylight, lets companies map their existing processes into headworn displays so that workers can retrieve critical information in real time. Since 2014, Upskill has been piloting this software across a number of headworn devices inside GE and Boeing—and not only Glass, but also Vuzix's M300 Smart Glasses and Microsoft's HoloLens. It was Upskill that provided GE with the software to complete its summer Glass pilot project at its Aviation facility.

(GE Ventures is an investor in Upskill.)

In the field, several major companies are already pairing Skylight software with wearable displays.

The Coca-Cola Bottling Company in the United States uses Skylight whenever field workers need to perform maintenance on factory equipment, equipment that is manufactured in Europe, notes Tate.

“The techs who would maintain or fix those pieces of equipment [are located] in Europe. So, if the equipment would go down, people from Europe would have to come, incurring a stoppage in production," Tate says. “That's one scenario we're seeing where having a set of Glasses at each factory is helping to increase productivity and reduce the amount of trips of experts to [bottling] sites."

Field service agencies for Boeing are also using Skylight software with wearable displays. Boeing's latest service reports and manuals are connected, via the software, to technicians' displays, meaning that even third-party field service workers can access updated Boeing technical data for any maintenance.

companies that have the money to invest in cutting-edge maintenance technology. But Tate says the benefits that company workers are reaping can be a boon to smaller companies as well.

“Using the Glasses, a worker can call back for support and share what they're seeing in real-time audio and video, rather than waiting for someone else to come out and travel to them," Tate says. “It's a huge cost avoidance.”

As for training field service workers to use the new technology, Tate says that's the easiest part of the process.

Typically, it takes workers about half a day to learn the software and hardware, and then a couple of months of using the technology in the field to increase their proficiency. In many cases, new field technicians prefer the digital tools to paper manuals.

“We're seeing a field workforce coming in that's already experienced the technology," says Tate. “It attracts more people into field service.”

Adapted from Field Service Digital. Images courtesy of Upskill.

At the moment, mostly larger companies are employing the wearable devices and software, 19

TECHNOLOGY TRENDS TO WATCH

GE REPORTS

FOR QANTAS PILOTS, FLIGHT DATA IS NOW A TAP AWAY GE’s FlightPulse application, powered by Predix, allows pilots to make fuel-saving decisions with real-time operational data.

Like many large companies, Qantas Airways, the Australian national carrier, has been working to become more sustainable. The airline has been introducing lightweight freight containers to cut fuel consumption, investing in electric-powered ground vehicles, and replacing lighting in all of its operational areas with energy-efficient LEDs. But when it wanted to cut its carbon footprint even more, the solution came in large part from one of the airline’s most treasured assets: Qantas pilots.

As a flight crew fuel manager, Qantas First Officer Dave Summergreene was “blown away by the wealth of data” the airline possessed. “But as a pilot, we had no way of knowing how to improve our own operational flying efficiency because we didn’t have the data,” he says. “We needed to get this data into the hands of pilots.”

As it turns out, General Electric had the same idea in mind when it developed a prototype for a

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fuel-efficiency app for pilots. However, what GE was missing was actual pilots, who could provide the insights and everyday experiences to make the idea work.

But in late 2016, everything clicked. Qantas and GE agreed to collaborate, and within a few months, 20 eager pilots signed on to test out the beta version of the app. The end result: FlightPulse, a new flight data and analytics application that lets pilots measure fuel use during every stage of a flight.

“In the summer of 2017, 1,700 pilots started using the app. “FlightPulse was designed by pilots for pilots,” says Captain Mike Galvin, head of fleet operations at Qantas. “It provides pilots with flight data in a very visual way, allowing them to see firsthand the amount of fuel used at different stages of a flight and how they can help to reduce carbon emissions.”

“Without data, pilots have to rely on estimates and theory, and hope their actions are really doing what they say,” explains Mansfield. “If you provide pilots with actual data, they can see the impact they are having and trust in the value of their actions.”

FlightPulse, which is powered by GE’s Predix platform for the Industrial Internet, serves a group of professionals who are perfectly suited to the motivational influence of metrics. John Mansfield—vice president and chief digital officer for GE Aviation, and a former pilot—notes that even though the data remains anonymous, “we are all really kind of competitive and take a lot of professional pride in what we do. We want to get better at everything we do.”

There’s plenty of information to mine—on a single flight from Sydney to Dallas, FlightPulse can collect more than 30 million data points. The app allows the pilots to customize data to what’s most relevant to their flights. For example, pilots employ various techniques to save fuel, like shutting down an unneeded engine while taxiing to the gate after landing. This action can shave off 10 kilograms of fuel per minute.

With FlightPulse, pilots can now see data from every flight, illuminating how much fuel savings they’ve realized, where they can make improvements and how their use of the tool compares with that of their peers. The information is displayed on an iPad as part of the pilots’ Electronic Flight Bags.

Before FlightPulse, pilots just stuck to industry standards—model-based estimates of the mostefficient ways to fly. Now, they can tweak their flying daily to precisely gauge the impact of operational decisions.

For instance, pilots already knew they could save 45 kilograms of fuel per flight by using idle power on the thrust reversers when landing on a long runway (as opposed to running up the engines after touchdown to help brake the aircraft). But with FlightPulse, they can see how often they’re doing this, how their utilization compares with that of other pilots, how they’re doing on the runways they land the most on, and whether their rates of use are improving over time.

As is often the case, the potential for data-driven improvements are boundless. FlightPulse was designed to be configurable, and Qantas wants to expand its current palette of measures, which cover everything from optimal fuel planning to flap settings on landing. The rich data source provided by modern aircraft will help enhance the information available to pilots through FlightPulse.

In the meantime, connecting FlightPulse with pilots is a major first step.

Adapted from GE Reports. Images courtesy of Qantas.

“Without data, pilots have to rely on estimates and theory, and hope their actions are really doing what they say,” explains Mansfield. “If you provide pilots with actual data, they can see the impact they are having and trust in the value of their actions.”

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STORIES FROM THE FIELD

ANDREW THOMPSON

PACKAGING FIRM NICKLIN GOES BIG ON TECH-ENABLED SERVICES U.K. packaging firm Nicklin once made boxes. Now they make internet-connected boxes.

You know those big glass cases that keep sandwiches warm at every budget eatery? They’re called food display cabinets, and a few years ago, a small British cabinet manufacturer was auditioning to become the food display cabinet supplier for Disney World. This was the big one.

Top management jetted to Florida for the meeting, and in the conference room, they proudly cut open the box to reveal their gleaming, state-of-the-art cabinet that they’d shipped across the Atlantic.

The executives sat back while Disney World’s brass stared at the sparkling case.

Except that it was broken.

At some point during the 4,000-nautical-mile boat trip, the product had gone from a sure thing to a smashed pile of embarrassment.

This, says Danny Harrison, is why the packaging industry needs servitization. Harrison is the business development manager at Nicklin Transit Packaging, a U.K.-based packaging company that manufactures boxes, palettes and everything needed to deliver products in one piece. “If you think about the product we make, it’s the last product you think could be servitized,” Harrison says.

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That is, until a new client comes to you with a terrible Disney World story. From nearly the beginning of packaging until now, companies have sold themselves to clients almost purely based on cost.

The best packaging company has been simply whichever one sold the cheapest boxes.

But the Internet of Things and modern design technologies have changed the playing field.

After the cabinet company unloaded its busted display case at Disney World, its leaders called Nicklin to ship a new one. Nicklin didn’t just throw the case in a box—the packing firm included sensors that tracked moisture, shock and other variables that indicated upon arrival whether the item had been damaged en route to the United States.

With Nicklin’s sensor-studded boxes, data is uploaded to a cloud service that lets clients log in to see how their packages are doing. If there’s an indication that products have been broken, they can immediately ship new products, rather than wait until they’re cringing in front of potential

“When we discussed what we were doing with friendly competitors, they thought we were mad, because they always thought that everyone wants to buy for the cheapest price,” Harrison says.

All of this has helped Nicklin differentiate itself in an industry that sells products that can feel more or less the same.

“When we discussed what we were doing with friendly competitors, they thought we were mad, because they always thought that everyone wants to buy for the cheapest price,” Harrison says.

Perhaps everyone except executives who are miserable at the happiest place on earth. customers. When they’re done with the sensors, clients ship them back to Nicklin to be used again.

Adapted from Field Service Digital

By offering advanced packaging services, companies like Nicklin can also help customers comply with local regulations. And before a package is even shipped, Nicklin designs its packaging with the same state-of-the-art software design tools that Rolls-Royce uses to design its engines. By using the software, Nicklin creates packing using the least amount of material necessary, a requirement for manufacturers in Britain.

"Yep – we're still having the same issue."

“We saw other competitors who had taken out too much material to meet the price point, and it wasn’t safe,” says Harrison. “Straight away, we had a way of figuring out what the optimal amount of material should be in that packaging.” In other words, the software sells compliance as a service.

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STORIES FROM THE FIELD

KRIS CARBER

STRUGGLING TO HIRE, ONE HVAC FIRM ROLLS OUT ITS OWN TRAINING CENTER San Diego HVAC firm’s decision to develop its own employee pipeline may be risky, but so far it's working Saddled with talent shortages and a retiring workforce, field service organizations are feeling a hiring pinch. While the shortfall of qualified technicians isn’t new, the situation has now become a barrier to growth, fueled by what some see as a reticence among millennials to enter the trades.

San Diego-based Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air is proactively addressing this workforce shortage by training and hiring technicians through a newly launched initiative, the Anderson Career Builder Institute. The 18-month training program opened in April 2017, and will enable recruits to earn incomes and gain workplace experience while enrolled in the program. Students start at a basic skill level and expand their knowledge through classes and hands-on experience.

NOT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S FIELD SERVICE INDUSTRY Mary Jean Anderson, president of Anderson Plumbing, Heating & Air, says that nowadays only

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6 percent of the population enters the trades, including electrical, roofing, masonry and HVAC. “The labor shortage is the number one problem of our industry.”

Anderson believes this shortage is due to an outdated perception of the trades. People see field service as dirty and mundane, she says.

“But it’s not the industry it was years ago. There is much more technology. There are cameras that can diagnose drain issues, and online product manuals to troubleshoot problems while in the field. It’s a great industry with great pay.”

INVENTING A FIELD SERVICE SYLLABUS Anderson founded the Institute with a class of twelve students, four of whom were women.

(Women make up just 1.4 percent of the HVAC workforce in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) The training is free to recruits and consists of eight hours of technical skills and two hours of communication skills

"We've had to push off growth because we couldn't find people."

— Mary Jean Anderson She has two veterans in the program. Each candidate must complete a personality profile and mechanical aptitude test before they are accepted.

PLAYING THE LONG GAME The Institute is privately funded, and Anderson acknowledges that training technicians can be costly. However, not having new trained technicians can be even more costly. per week, followed by fieldwork alongside experienced technicians.

The curriculum emphasizes residential repairs, and was designed by Anderson’s husband, Bryan Rominger, a 30-year veteran of the plumbing industry. Upon completion of the program, recruits will have achieved a level of expertise necessary for an entry-level position—a head start, considering it can take four years to become a journey-level HVAC technician.

A recruit’s typical path begins at a maintenancelevel position, Anderson says, where duties might include flushing radiators or running gas lines, before graduating to more-complex tasks.

While students learn technical applications, the program also stresses interpersonal skills.

Developing relationships with customers is critical to creating loyalty, Anderson says.

She markets the program through social media, and pitches job seekers at career fairs, women’s centers and veterans organizations.

“We’ve had to push off growth because we couldn’t find people. We give our recruits paid training and work experience. In return, we ask that they give us a five-year commitment to the industry, and hopefully to Anderson Plumbing,” she says.

Graduates won’t be contractually required to work for Anderson, but she hopes they will bond with other technicians and stay.

Although Anderson founded the school to help meet her own labor needs, other HVAC professionals have visited the Institute in hopes of starting their own schools or possibly collaborating with Anderson and the Institute.

Expansion depends on receiving accreditation, Anderson says. But she is optimistic that the school will be a success.

“Five of the students are already in the truck as maintenance staff, and three are running [basic] repairs."

Adapted from Field Service Digital

“Twenty percent of vets are unemployed, and exmilitary fits our industry,” she says. “They’re hard workers, they have discipline and they don’t mind wearing a uniform.”

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STORIES FROM THE FIELD

CHRIS MORRIS

DESCHUTES IS BREWING THE PERFECT PINT WITH THE IOT Beer geeks behind the scenes at a popular Oregon brewery have a secret tool to save time and money and to improve consistency: IoT sensors.

Deschutes Brewery is a favorite on the craft beer scene, with go-to standards like Fresh Squeezed IPA and Black Butte Porter, but the production process at this Oregon brewery is a little different than those used by its competitors.

Human brewmasters are still firmly in charge, but Deschutes is one of the few commercial brewers to embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) in the brewing process.

Like any large brewer, automation has long been a part of Deschutes’ brewing process, but workers have still manually taken samples and analyzed inproduction beers to determine when the product needs to transition from one of the nine brewing phases. Transfer a beer from one step to another too early (or too late), and you’re bound to impact the quality.

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Since its 1988 founding, Deschutes has used this manual method and documented all of the associated data. But in an effort to streamline the brewing process, Deschutes teamed with OSISoft and Microsoft in 2016 to use machine learning and predictive analysis to automate the phase-shifting process. It wasn’t an easy decision.

DATA FROM THE PAST FOR BETTER BEER IN THE FUTURE “We were collecting this data, but using it for more static reporting. Now we’re starting to say we can use that historical data and leverage it to predict the future,” says Brian Faivre, brewmaster at Deschutes Brewery. “It took years, culturally, for us to get to that spot. Brewing has been around so many years, and there’s so much history. We just

“We were collecting this data, but using it for more static reporting. Now we’re starting to say we can use that historical data and leverage it to predict the future,” says Brian Faivre, brewmaster at Deschutes Brewery. enabling them to better schedule the process.

(The predictive models continually update, based on brewing history.) Since it’s still a new process, the actual shift in stages is done manually after brewers confirm the readiness, but Faivre says they’re looking at automating that in the future.

look at this as another tool for us to make better beer.”

Using IoT tools, Deschutes is able to reduce the fermentation process by 24 to 48 hours.

Previously, brewers used their best guesses, which could have been hours later than the times determined by the predictive technology. This time savings gives the brewery a chance to increase its annual production without buying any additional equipment, hiring extra staff, or compromising quality.

Deschutes uses machine-learning software to predict the transition times in the brewery’s 50 or so tanks, which range in capacity from 100 barrels to 1,000 barrels (3,150 to 31,500 gallons).

Sensors have long been embedded in beer tanks for brewers to get accurate readings, but few brewers have paired those with predictive-learning software.

Working in conjunction with Microsoft’s Cortana Intelligence Suite, a collection of analysis tools, the sensors in the tanks can now determine the percentage of the beer that has been fermented in each batch—and predict when it’s time to shift from the fermentation phase to the free-rise phase (where the heat of fermentation increases the liquid’s temperature free of artificial means).

Deschutes’ IoT integration is still new, but Faivre says the company is already looking at other possible uses. An obvious area of interest is preventive maintenance for the company’s equipment, which would alert brewers if tank parts, for example, were due for service or replacement. But the brewery is also curious to see how far it can push the technology.

Brewers use visualization tools on their computers to see when fermentation will be complete, 27

“How do we take this information and do something great with it?” Faivre asks. “I feel like we’ve just scratched the surface. There are a lot of areas we could look to leverage the data we’re collecting. It’s super helpful for operations, but now we’re looking at the predictive part.”

system engineers who don’t understand why your brewing process is so unique. That’s very much on our minds with this work.”

Adapted from Field Service Digital

MAINTAINING A HUMAN TOUCH IN THE BREWING PROCESS It’s important to note, though, that Deschutes has no plans to let machines develop the company’s new beers, says Faivre. The extra time the IoT integration has given Deschutes’ brewers is being used to focus on creating new brands and improving current ones. And humans will remain the drivers in the overall process.

“We want to use these tools to make our jobs easier, and ultimately to make better beer,” he explains. “But it’s so crucial that we dictate the process. If you let that get away, then you have

"Do you really have to sample every beer to figure out if the heat exchanger is working?"

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CONTRIBUTORS Janine Milne Janine Milne has been writing about technology and business for more than 20 years, both as a freelancer and an in-house editor.

Andrew Zaleski Andrew Zaleski (@ajzaleski) lives in Maryland and is a regular contributor to Fortune and CNBC. He has also written for The Atlantic, Popular Science, Politico Magazine, Backchannel and elsewhere.

Nevin Thompson Nevin Thompson (@Nevin_Thompson) is a journalist, copywriter and content strategist who covers stories in a variety of verticals.

Andrew Thompson Andrew Thompson (asthompson) is a writer whose work has appeared in the Verge, NBC News, the Awl and elsewhere.

Derek Korte Derek Korte (@derekkorte) is the editor at Field Service Digital and managing editor at Original9 Media.

Jane Irene Kelly Jane Irene Kelly has two decades of professional writing, editing and reporting experience. She writes about business and technology and is a graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Patrice Eberline Patrice Eberline is vice president of global customer transformation at ServiceMax from GE Digital, where she uses her years of service delivery experience working with prospects and existing customers to fully leverage the value of ServiceMax to their field service organizations.

Chris Morris Chris Morris (@MorrisatLarge) is a veteran journalist with more than 22 years of experience, the last 13 of which were spent with some of the internet’s biggest sites. He currently freelances for several clients, including CNBC, Yahoo!, Variety and Wired.com.

Kris Carber Kris Carber has been writing about field service management and location technologies for nearly a decade.

GE Reports GE Reports is a daily news, video and social media hub covering GE’s transformation into the world’s largest digital industrial company. The site covers nearly all aspects of GE’s business, innovation and digital transformation, which is using software and data analytics to connect, control and improve machines and entire industries.

Terry LaBan Terry LaBan (@tlaban) is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in Mad Magazine, Nickelodeon Magazine and Details.

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