Adopting a new approach to service operations has seen Finning UK & Ireland score a 75 per cent first time fix rate for customer equipment faults – achieved by leveraging condition monitoring technology and historic data from over 5500 remote diagnostic sessions.

The remote services and diagnostic team at Finning, the world's largest Cat® equipment dealer, has introduced the new approach to its service operations using data from machine telematics, which is then cross referenced with historic service data to diagnose the problem remotely. This approach has radically improved the first-time fix rate for its customers – minimising machine down time and ensuring their engineers’ time is used most effectively.

Over the last three years the team has facilitated a shift from offering a reactive service and support function to one that is fully proactive. Drawing on data from real-time remote diagnostic sessions – with the team conducting up to 300 each month - the engineers use this information to accurately predict asset faults and issues remotely. This enables them to take the necessary action – such as ordering the right part or parts – so that the engineer visiting the site can resolve the issue during just one site visit, ensuring the customer's assets are returned to operations as soon as possible.

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Strategic Operations Manager for Finning UK & Ireland, Nikolaos Kakoudakis, said: "Having the ability to remotely diagnose an equipment fault is crucial for both us and the customer operating that equipment. For us, being able to identify the precise nature of the fault means that when the engineer goes out to site, they have the correct parts and can resolve the issue quickly for the customer. This ensures any downtime is kept to an absolute minimum, which can be costly and cause project delays. It also reduces operational inefficiencies on site.

"There's a real sense of pride among the team, who genuinely want to give our customers the very best level of servicing support and expert guidance. Everyone in the team should feel very proud of the hard work and exemplary work ethic."

The new approach has been so successful that Caterpillar®, during a recent visit to the company's Leeds branch, awarded the team a certificate recognising their ‘excellence in condition monitoring and remote services’.

Speaking about the award, Lavanya Ajesh, Managing Director at Caterpillar Commercial, Northern Europe, said: "We are focused on leveraging and optimising remote services and condition monitoring to accelerate customer satisfaction and services growth. The dedication of the Finning team towards using these tools to improve first-time fix and to drive service growth is highly commendable. Their work is helping pave the road in this journey. Congratulations and well deserved on the recognition as a best practice dealer in this field globally."

Commenting on the achievement, Chris Hepworth, General Manager for Service Operations at Finning, said: "Over the last three years, the technology and remote services team has delivered transformational results demonstrating improvement month-on-month. The team provides services to exceed our customers’ needs, from breakdowns to proactive interventions preventing failure. These results have been achieved through teamwork and collaboration with the wider service operations team. Well done to everyone involved."