5 field service industry trends to watch for in 2019

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The year 2018 was the year when significant breakthroughs in technology were devised. The year 2019 has more to look forward to. In the sphere of automation and technology, a lot of initiatives and achievements and promising industrial growth is expected.

• IoT-driven predictive maintenance: Industries today have smart devices that are connected to the central hub. Owing to the control in the hands of the machine operator, they can know in advance if an asset is broken. In an IoT driven apparatus, it is easy to recognise which part needs to be replaced, or maintenance is required. These proactive repair and maintenance alerts are benefitting to both customers and suppliers. It is an asset for the plant as it is easy to identify and fix problems before issues turn into failure.

• Focus on Field Service Mobility: The quickest and the easiest way to respond to service requests is to lay emphasis on mobility. To fulfil this, it is required to send real-time and offline data to field technicians via native mobile. By providing step-by-step remote guidance to the technicians, it ensures a direct channel of communication between the technician and the customer. This can be the first step in the process that offers better problem fixation rate.

• Growth of artificial intelligence: Automation is one way to ensure better faster revenue. It not only reduces the cost of operation but also when the processes are controlled by artificial intelligence, the operation has the upper hand. They are now capable of communicating with the machines and quickly identify issues. Another advantage of AI in field services is that the plant has streamlined operations. They are able to prioritise work order, dispatch the right technician as per the maintenance or repair required and keep track of machine’s performance.

• Data-driven delivery: With industries drifting towards big data and analytics, it is essential to understand how the data shows results. Monitoring data on the backend ensures that it delivers operational excellence and maximise service quality. Field service management also takes into consideration what are machines are delivering and after that judge if maintenance is required.

• Make Field Service Training More Engaging: With Industrial IoT in place, the employees are taught and trained to operate the machinery. Owing to these developments, it is crucial that the people are trained to understand the information displayed on HMI. In case the information transmitted on the machine’s end is not in sync with the output seen, it is important to report maintenance in the SCADA Systems.

Schneider Electric India offers a complete set of services from design studies to modernisation. It also offers automation training for employees to induce them to the domain of automated machinery, HMI analytics and helps them understand the functioning of the machine. In the past years, the services have largely contributed to reducing the OpEx, lowered down the operational costs through data centres. In this year, they aim to set the bar higher and upscale what the industry could deliver in consideration to the product or service, employees and the end user.