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Map based dispatching enhances Mobile Workforce Management
Scott Waldman
Guy Waterman
IMedeon, Inc.
11605 Haynes Bridge Road
Suite 600
Alpharetta, Georgia 30004
770-777-8100
Scott Waldman
Guy Waterman
IMedeon, Inc.
11605 Haynes Bridge Road
Suite 600
Alpharetta, Georgia 30004
770-777-8100
Map Based Dispatching
It is generally believed that the use of map based dispatching is only applicable when considering short cycle work requiring immediate attention but not for work with a longer planning horizon. The reasons for this belief stem from the fact that this type of dispatching requires the physical creation of the relationship between the work resource and the work task. As the number of field work orders grow, this manual process becomes too cumbersome to manage effectively in a graphical manner. Programmatic scheduling algorithms are routinely applied to situations where large numbers of orders with longer lead times and service resources are associated in a manner to meet customer requests while making the most efficient use of an organization’s resources. Unfortunately many people believe that short and long cycle work cannot be effectively co-mingled in the graphical environment because the cost of doing so does not generate the benefits necessary.
While creation of order schedules are best served by the use of optimization algorithms, once scheduled (typically committed the day prior to its due time) all orders enter the phase of execution. The phase of execution is the most critical time in the order’s life cycle. It is the time when a customer’s expectations for delivery are the highest and the company’s ability (or inability) to deliver the product or service is most exposed. Most ethical companies will not accept work without the ability to fulfill it, but the reason why most companies fail to deliver on their commitments is that they did not account for the one factor that tends turn many good schedules in to bad schedules --- change. Change imposed by factors within and beyond the control of the service provider. It can be argued that it is possible for scheduling routines to account for environmental changes and make the necessary adjustments to maintain the highest customer service levels. However, it is likely impossible for any routine to be robust enough to simultaneously consider and resolve in a timely manner the absolute number of possible outside influences that could disrupt a ‘good’ schedule. In the execution zone, there is currently only one entity that can effectively manage a schedule in a manner that maximizes service levels while simultaneously balancing profitability. A human scheduler is that entity.
When a schedule is presented to a scheduler/dispatcher, it is their responsibility to follow the progress of the orders from the time they are assigned through fulfillment. Maximizing productivity of workers in the field and managing customer expectations are critical to the success of the scheduler’s mission. Managing any number of orders in a manual mode or non-graphical automated manner places the mission of the scheduler and of the company at great risk when compared to managing the same tasks in a graphical, map-based manner.
Principles of Map Based Dispatch
The first principle to consider when addressing a graphical display is personalization. Most schedules try to consider and display too much information at a single time. An effective way to manage large amounts of information in a graphical manner is to provide the users the power to ‘personalize’ their views of data on an on going basis. Schedulers can manage orders on an exception basis by focusing on orders that are in jeopardy of being missed for one reason or another. Once identified, those orders can be resolved in a manner that meets the customers’ expectations and the company’s goals before they become a problem. And remember different users have different needs and preferences. Not providing users the ability to specify their own views will greatly limit the success of any solution deployment. Gaining visibility to the order progress in a manageable form is the foremost benefit afforded by graphical representation of the schedule.
The second principle to consider is the continuous update of data. Orders, resources, and statuses in the current schedule horizon need to be continuously updated and that information needs to be displayed over a user specified planning horizon. Not providing users the ability to see into the near future is like asking a driver to steer a car by looking in a rear view mirror. Unfortunately many systems ask users to do just that monitor the progress of schedules by looking at only historical information or worse. Schedule statuses and planning horizons naturally come together in an automated mode and are best displayed in a graphical manner. The critical status of orders at risk of not being met is so much more apparent when a scheduler sees all of their resources laid out in a single, selective view. Alternate resources are readily identified for that might be missed as well as considering performing orders that could be completed during unscheduled ‘down time’ (i.e. appointment cancellation).
The third principle to consider, cost of deployment. Although the benefits seem obvious, the cost of deployment until recently has not been. Most map-based projects have come at a great cost to companies. Benefits have not been well-defined and on-going costs extremely underestimated. A new standard is being raised with the ‘product-ization’ of mapping solutions. There are products that combine mapping technology with mobile GPS components and scheduling solutions so that companies can more readily identify the value proposition these combined solutions represent. Advancements in web-based technology and improvements in wireless, mobile devices and networks, enable systems deployment for pennies on the transaction as they are licensed on a subscription basis. These advances balance the investment in technology with the benefits they generate easier than the traditional licensing models. They also make solutions available to an audience of smaller companies heretofore unable to consider this type of technology due to its cost. More importantly, the benefits map-based technologies provide will enable more companies to compete for and gain competitive advantage in the markets they serve by allowing them to set new operating standards for customer satisfaction, operational efficiencies, and employee excellence.
Benefit Case Studies
Case study one – Where are you? Customer connectivity is greatly enhanced through map-based technologies. Monitoring progress of appointments not only avoids service delivery problems, but also provides an opportunity to enhance customer service levels. Currently workers use maps to determine where they are located and where they need to go. In fact, the map-based paradigm with web connectivity makes the mapping process easier than it has ever been. However, the one element of the service equation that has been noticeably absent from these solutions are the customers.
The story of the consumer that has to wait at home all day for a service technician to arrive for a fifteen-minute service call is all too well known. Combining position identification with order status and automated communications, customers can now be advised as to the estimated time of arrival as the order status progresses. As the completion of the previous customer order draws near, the time of travel based upon distance of travel current traffic conditions can be calculated. Then if requested, customers can be notified via e-mail, e-page, or interactive voice response as to the actual time of the service technicians’ arrival. Orders can also selectively be made available to customers via an internet query as to the status of their appointment. For one company, this small but unique improvement has directly attributed to a twenty percent increase in orders from repeat customers and word of mouth referrals. Simply knowing a technician’s current location and then translating that information into customer value enables these benefits.
Case study two – m-what?
The business world is a-buzz about the letters e, B, i, and the number 2. That is because e-commerce is fueling the B2B business craze sweeping the internet based trading community. There is a significant flaw to the deployment of the B2B e-commerce solutions in that they focus on a limited number of participants in the companies that deploy them. They are focused on the purchasing department to use trading exchanges that combine the purchasing power of many companies with the delivery capabilities of many suppliers to arrive at lower costs and improved service levels for customers and suppliers alike. E-commerce ignores part of the organization responsible for a tremendous amount of purchases made by a company, the mobile field-force. It is the field that initiates replacement of large capital items. Field workers have been issued corporate ‘purchasing cards’ allowing them to purchase anything from consumable items to fuel. All of these transactions are performed without the benefit of locating an exchange partner or the best price for an item within the timeframe needed. That is where m-commerce applies.
Mobile service forces should be provided the ability to connect their crew with the closest (distance) qualified trading partners for the materials and supplemental services they might need to complete a job in the most effective manner possible. An example of m-commerce involves a water company identifying a water main break. The traditional repair crew does not roam with a large amount of replacement material on board. Typically the defects are patched and then reworked at a later time when the appropriate material can be delivered to the work site. The cost for the repair is doubled as a result of not readily having a supplier (internal or external) ready to deliver the needed material to the work location. Using positional information gathered at the location via GPS, local suppliers could be automatically sourced as to the availability of materials and services to support the repair. In addition, vital information gathered at the work site could be logged and automatically sent to update an asset management system. As a result of deploying map-based m-commerce solutions a company has drastically reduced the cost of the replacement of their capital items as well as reduced the number of re-work jobs due to repairs being completely resolved (at a lower overall cost) the first time.
Case study three – Replenishment on the fly
Much of a mobile crew’s time is spent locating material for the jobs done while mobile inventories stand at an all time high. It does not seem possible for mobile workforces to get the right material for all the jobs they perform resulting in a high number of broken calls and re-works. Field forces are reluctant to give up their bloated inventories because they remember the one time they did not have the part they needed. They reacted to that situation by overstocking mobile inventories. In fact, many organizations do not know how much rolling inventory they have as it is been expensed at the time it is issued from the warehouse. It is not uncommon to hear of companies with warehouse turns in excess of twenty four turns a year while the mobile inventories are turning less than four times a year. The inventory problems only worsen as the warehouse looks to increase their material velocity while the field looks for greater assurance that their needs will be met.
Two pieces of information are required when referring to mobile replenishment. First and foremost, the work location must be identified. Secondly, the time the material is needed must be identified. Once this information is known, two types of replenishment can be processed.
Traditional mobile replenishment of the service vehicle stock on a regular basis enables crews to focus on completing their work without being concerned with managing their stock. Crews no longer are required to visit the depot to replenish materials as it is brought to them. This action in turn increases the ability for the crews to complete more work as they have more time in the field and will have fewer broken calls due to a lack of material. Field inventories will decrease as the order fulfillment velocity increases.
A separate logistics support team supports mobile replenishment of service vehicles and also begin to pre-position job specific material in lockers at the work site prior to the work crew arriving. Material required to complete jobs not stocked in the service vehicle can be staged as well as collecting any unused or removed material once the job is complete. This process enables work crews to focus on the work at hand versus scrambling to acquire the material necessary to complete their assigned tasks. The costs of maintaining a separate fleet are far out weighed by the benefits generated through increased productivity of the crews, reduced material costs, and improved asset utilization across the organization.
This teaming approach to logistics support even only partially deployed has provided companies with noted benefits and improved their competitive position in the markets they serve.
Conclusion
Map based dispatching provides much more than graphically displaying orders and crews on a map. From dealing consistently with all orders in the phase of execution to the ability to focus only on orders that could potentially become problems, a map allows workers to more freely interact with orders, customers, and crews involved in the service delivery paradigm. The real benefits of map based dispatching come from enabling business processes that rely on accurate information regarding the status of orders, customers, and crews that provide real, measurable benefits to the organization. These benefits will fuel the deployment of graphical based solutions over the next few years. It will be those firms that deploy these new processes that will change the service business landscape as they set the standards all others will have to follow. Until the market recognizes those standards, the early adopters of map based dispatching and enabled business processes will enjoy competitive advantage and unparalleled success.
Figure 1. Map- based dispatch display
Figure 2. Enabled Benefits
It is generally believed that the use of map based dispatching is only applicable when considering short cycle work requiring immediate attention but not for work with a longer planning horizon. The reasons for this belief stem from the fact that this type of dispatching requires the physical creation of the relationship between the work resource and the work task. As the number of field work orders grow, this manual process becomes too cumbersome to manage effectively in a graphical manner. Programmatic scheduling algorithms are routinely applied to situations where large numbers of orders with longer lead times and service resources are associated in a manner to meet customer requests while making the most efficient use of an organization’s resources. Unfortunately many people believe that short and long cycle work cannot be effectively co-mingled in the graphical environment because the cost of doing so does not generate the benefits necessary.
While creation of order schedules are best served by the use of optimization algorithms, once scheduled (typically committed the day prior to its due time) all orders enter the phase of execution. The phase of execution is the most critical time in the order’s life cycle. It is the time when a customer’s expectations for delivery are the highest and the company’s ability (or inability) to deliver the product or service is most exposed. Most ethical companies will not accept work without the ability to fulfill it, but the reason why most companies fail to deliver on their commitments is that they did not account for the one factor that tends turn many good schedules in to bad schedules --- change. Change imposed by factors within and beyond the control of the service provider. It can be argued that it is possible for scheduling routines to account for environmental changes and make the necessary adjustments to maintain the highest customer service levels. However, it is likely impossible for any routine to be robust enough to simultaneously consider and resolve in a timely manner the absolute number of possible outside influences that could disrupt a ‘good’ schedule. In the execution zone, there is currently only one entity that can effectively manage a schedule in a manner that maximizes service levels while simultaneously balancing profitability. A human scheduler is that entity.
When a schedule is presented to a scheduler/dispatcher, it is their responsibility to follow the progress of the orders from the time they are assigned through fulfillment. Maximizing productivity of workers in the field and managing customer expectations are critical to the success of the scheduler’s mission. Managing any number of orders in a manual mode or non-graphical automated manner places the mission of the scheduler and of the company at great risk when compared to managing the same tasks in a graphical, map-based manner.
Principles of Map Based Dispatch
The first principle to consider when addressing a graphical display is personalization. Most schedules try to consider and display too much information at a single time. An effective way to manage large amounts of information in a graphical manner is to provide the users the power to ‘personalize’ their views of data on an on going basis. Schedulers can manage orders on an exception basis by focusing on orders that are in jeopardy of being missed for one reason or another. Once identified, those orders can be resolved in a manner that meets the customers’ expectations and the company’s goals before they become a problem. And remember different users have different needs and preferences. Not providing users the ability to specify their own views will greatly limit the success of any solution deployment. Gaining visibility to the order progress in a manageable form is the foremost benefit afforded by graphical representation of the schedule.
The second principle to consider is the continuous update of data. Orders, resources, and statuses in the current schedule horizon need to be continuously updated and that information needs to be displayed over a user specified planning horizon. Not providing users the ability to see into the near future is like asking a driver to steer a car by looking in a rear view mirror. Unfortunately many systems ask users to do just that monitor the progress of schedules by looking at only historical information or worse. Schedule statuses and planning horizons naturally come together in an automated mode and are best displayed in a graphical manner. The critical status of orders at risk of not being met is so much more apparent when a scheduler sees all of their resources laid out in a single, selective view. Alternate resources are readily identified for that might be missed as well as considering performing orders that could be completed during unscheduled ‘down time’ (i.e. appointment cancellation).
The third principle to consider, cost of deployment. Although the benefits seem obvious, the cost of deployment until recently has not been. Most map-based projects have come at a great cost to companies. Benefits have not been well-defined and on-going costs extremely underestimated. A new standard is being raised with the ‘product-ization’ of mapping solutions. There are products that combine mapping technology with mobile GPS components and scheduling solutions so that companies can more readily identify the value proposition these combined solutions represent. Advancements in web-based technology and improvements in wireless, mobile devices and networks, enable systems deployment for pennies on the transaction as they are licensed on a subscription basis. These advances balance the investment in technology with the benefits they generate easier than the traditional licensing models. They also make solutions available to an audience of smaller companies heretofore unable to consider this type of technology due to its cost. More importantly, the benefits map-based technologies provide will enable more companies to compete for and gain competitive advantage in the markets they serve by allowing them to set new operating standards for customer satisfaction, operational efficiencies, and employee excellence.
Benefit Case Studies
Case study one – Where are you? Customer connectivity is greatly enhanced through map-based technologies. Monitoring progress of appointments not only avoids service delivery problems, but also provides an opportunity to enhance customer service levels. Currently workers use maps to determine where they are located and where they need to go. In fact, the map-based paradigm with web connectivity makes the mapping process easier than it has ever been. However, the one element of the service equation that has been noticeably absent from these solutions are the customers.
The story of the consumer that has to wait at home all day for a service technician to arrive for a fifteen-minute service call is all too well known. Combining position identification with order status and automated communications, customers can now be advised as to the estimated time of arrival as the order status progresses. As the completion of the previous customer order draws near, the time of travel based upon distance of travel current traffic conditions can be calculated. Then if requested, customers can be notified via e-mail, e-page, or interactive voice response as to the actual time of the service technicians’ arrival. Orders can also selectively be made available to customers via an internet query as to the status of their appointment. For one company, this small but unique improvement has directly attributed to a twenty percent increase in orders from repeat customers and word of mouth referrals. Simply knowing a technician’s current location and then translating that information into customer value enables these benefits.
Case study two – m-what?
The business world is a-buzz about the letters e, B, i, and the number 2. That is because e-commerce is fueling the B2B business craze sweeping the internet based trading community. There is a significant flaw to the deployment of the B2B e-commerce solutions in that they focus on a limited number of participants in the companies that deploy them. They are focused on the purchasing department to use trading exchanges that combine the purchasing power of many companies with the delivery capabilities of many suppliers to arrive at lower costs and improved service levels for customers and suppliers alike. E-commerce ignores part of the organization responsible for a tremendous amount of purchases made by a company, the mobile field-force. It is the field that initiates replacement of large capital items. Field workers have been issued corporate ‘purchasing cards’ allowing them to purchase anything from consumable items to fuel. All of these transactions are performed without the benefit of locating an exchange partner or the best price for an item within the timeframe needed. That is where m-commerce applies.
Mobile service forces should be provided the ability to connect their crew with the closest (distance) qualified trading partners for the materials and supplemental services they might need to complete a job in the most effective manner possible. An example of m-commerce involves a water company identifying a water main break. The traditional repair crew does not roam with a large amount of replacement material on board. Typically the defects are patched and then reworked at a later time when the appropriate material can be delivered to the work site. The cost for the repair is doubled as a result of not readily having a supplier (internal or external) ready to deliver the needed material to the work location. Using positional information gathered at the location via GPS, local suppliers could be automatically sourced as to the availability of materials and services to support the repair. In addition, vital information gathered at the work site could be logged and automatically sent to update an asset management system. As a result of deploying map-based m-commerce solutions a company has drastically reduced the cost of the replacement of their capital items as well as reduced the number of re-work jobs due to repairs being completely resolved (at a lower overall cost) the first time.
Case study three – Replenishment on the fly
Much of a mobile crew’s time is spent locating material for the jobs done while mobile inventories stand at an all time high. It does not seem possible for mobile workforces to get the right material for all the jobs they perform resulting in a high number of broken calls and re-works. Field forces are reluctant to give up their bloated inventories because they remember the one time they did not have the part they needed. They reacted to that situation by overstocking mobile inventories. In fact, many organizations do not know how much rolling inventory they have as it is been expensed at the time it is issued from the warehouse. It is not uncommon to hear of companies with warehouse turns in excess of twenty four turns a year while the mobile inventories are turning less than four times a year. The inventory problems only worsen as the warehouse looks to increase their material velocity while the field looks for greater assurance that their needs will be met.
Two pieces of information are required when referring to mobile replenishment. First and foremost, the work location must be identified. Secondly, the time the material is needed must be identified. Once this information is known, two types of replenishment can be processed.
Traditional mobile replenishment of the service vehicle stock on a regular basis enables crews to focus on completing their work without being concerned with managing their stock. Crews no longer are required to visit the depot to replenish materials as it is brought to them. This action in turn increases the ability for the crews to complete more work as they have more time in the field and will have fewer broken calls due to a lack of material. Field inventories will decrease as the order fulfillment velocity increases.
A separate logistics support team supports mobile replenishment of service vehicles and also begin to pre-position job specific material in lockers at the work site prior to the work crew arriving. Material required to complete jobs not stocked in the service vehicle can be staged as well as collecting any unused or removed material once the job is complete. This process enables work crews to focus on the work at hand versus scrambling to acquire the material necessary to complete their assigned tasks. The costs of maintaining a separate fleet are far out weighed by the benefits generated through increased productivity of the crews, reduced material costs, and improved asset utilization across the organization.
This teaming approach to logistics support even only partially deployed has provided companies with noted benefits and improved their competitive position in the markets they serve.
Conclusion
Map based dispatching provides much more than graphically displaying orders and crews on a map. From dealing consistently with all orders in the phase of execution to the ability to focus only on orders that could potentially become problems, a map allows workers to more freely interact with orders, customers, and crews involved in the service delivery paradigm. The real benefits of map based dispatching come from enabling business processes that rely on accurate information regarding the status of orders, customers, and crews that provide real, measurable benefits to the organization. These benefits will fuel the deployment of graphical based solutions over the next few years. It will be those firms that deploy these new processes that will change the service business landscape as they set the standards all others will have to follow. Until the market recognizes those standards, the early adopters of map based dispatching and enabled business processes will enjoy competitive advantage and unparalleled success.
Figure 1. Map- based dispatch display
Figure 2. Enabled Benefits