Need for Service
Most manufactures view service as an added expense and burden. Their goal is to build a product that does not require service. Upper management and sales usually present design with a need for a product, and when the product has been designed and sales estimates have been made, it is up to manufacturing to produce the product at the lowest possible cost. Serviceability is usually over looked unless the company has a strong service department that becomes involved in the design and
manufacturing stages.
New Product Phase
During the new product stage manufacturing may look to the service department for flaws or early problems. This is usually a very short time frame with few numbers of equipment to work with. So it is very important to keep the factory advised of all failures during this period and supply as much detail as possible. It is very tempting to make easy repairs at this stage and not inform manufacturing, however these problems will continue to occur throughout the life of the product, resulting in a poor image for the company.
A tempting trap for the service department, is to find an easy fix and not share the problem with manufacturing. This problem is usually lumped into the list of easy repairs shared between repair technicians, and in some cases not shared, resulting in a quick turnaround of the repair making the technician look good. This may result in additional profit for the service department, however the company as a whole will suffer due to more frequent equipment failures. If you are not seeing modifications for improving new products, then there is something wrong. Problems are not being reported or are being ignored by manufacturing.
Near the end of the new product stage, manufacturing will believe that they have a good product and will become very reluctant to listen to the service department about problems. Even more details and numbers must be collected in order to correct design or manufacturing problems.
Mature Product Phase
If chronic equipment problems have not been addressed by this time, you can expect to deal with the problems through the remaining life time of the product. A good service department will then stock the required parts for quick fixes or come up with their own modifications to avoid repeat repairs. If the cost of these repairs can be reflected back to manufacturing and design, then you can usually get help with the modifications, however this is rare. So do everything that is possible during the New Product stage to identify problems and notify the factory or your supplier.
End of Product Life
At this stage, sometimes within two years, the product is being replaced and the company would rather sell the new product over the older one. The service department now has a real problem. How do you keep customers happy who are not ready to upgrade to the newer equipment?
At the end of the warranty period, the service department has an opportunity to make a profit on the repairs for the company. However, this may be at the expense of loss sales in a new product. Each repair must be evaluated for the customer to see if it is more cost effective to buy the new model or repair the old. Guide lines should be in place for each product with a set percentage as a guide as to when to advise the customer that a trade up would be advisable. Maybe a trade in value could be worked out with sales to encourage the sale. The service department should be credited with these sales in order to show a profit as the profit from the repair would be lost.
Is there a market for the old product? If there is a market need for the old product then the service department can continue to make a profit repairing the product as long as manufacturing is willing to keep supplying parts.
When I started working for Eastman Kodak Company, I was working in a reconditioning center where we rebuilt equipment from the bottom up, even with a fresh coat of paint. There was a good market for the used equipment as smaller companies could not afford new equipment right away. Sales would use the lower priced rebuilt equipment to get in the door and later take the equipment back on trade for upgrades on new equipment. I can recall rebuilding the same unit more than once. However the life time of a product was 10 years or more, where now the life time of a product may only be months.
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