Customer Service with SAP add-on

Yaskawa Europe is part of Yaskawa Electric Corporation and a provider of mechatronics and robotics solutions. The company is represented in EMEA at 23 locations with its own subsidiaries.

A comprehensive after-sales service supports customers to ensure high plant availability and productivity. To this end, a total of 110 service technicians are on the road in the region in the two business units Drives Motion Control and Robotics.

SAP customizing was also intended to modernize and standardize service processes by introducing a field service management solution. This was to be reflected above all in an increase in customer satisfaction.

To date, Yaskawa in Europe has used various tools to plan and control its service technicians for commissioning, maintenance and repairs. Dispatchers used Excel lists, manual planning boards, and an Access database. The technicians filled in their feedback on paper.

Offline access to SAP data and simplification of material logistics and the returns process played an important role in the search for a suitable solution.

MobileX solutions were ultimately chosen because they allow simple SAP connection and offer a wide range of functions that are ideally suited to the complex service process.

The introduction of MobileX-Dispatch and MobileX-MIP for Field Service began in Germany in September 2016. The individual adaptations of the standard products to Yaskawa's requirements were carried out according to the agile principle in five sprints of three weeks each.

The greatest challenge was the SAP integration into an SAP system landscape that did not exist at the start of the project. Today, an on-prem version of ERP/ECC 6.0 is in use.

Since May 2017, the customer service technicians in Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland and the UK have also been working with the mobile solution. They are controlled by a dispatcher in Germany and a dispatcher in the UK.

The Europe-wide assignments involve maintenance or repairs that are usually scheduled two to five days in advance. The technicians now no longer receive their orders, including order details, on paper, but in the mobile solution MobileX-MIP for Field Service.

Thanks to the offline functionality of the solution, they have access to the relevant data on the plants and machines in ERP/ECC 6.0 wherever they are, which means they are much better informed than before and can rectify faults more quickly. This has already improved service quality and customer satisfaction.

When the work is done, the technicians create the service report in MobileX-MIP for Field Service and have it signed by the customer. This eliminates media breaks, which has improved the data quality of the reports and master data.

There is no information from Yaskawa on the licensing issue of "indirect use". The reduced bureaucracy means that service technicians now have more time for telephone support and in-house repairs.

Dispatchers can now also devote more time to other tasks such as customer contact, technical telephone support, field service and sales.

Spare parts management is also integrated into the new service process. Yaskawa delivers spare parts from the central warehouse in Germany directly to the customer. The consignment stores are used in SAP Customer Service (CS) for staging.

After assigning a service order to a technician, the provision of the reserved material is automatically triggered from the order previously created in CS. The dispatcher sees the status of the goods movement in MobileX-Dispatch.

After the technician has finished his job at the customer's site, he selects the appropriate reservation in MobileX-MIP for Field Service for the return of the used material or the return of the unused material.

The material is then automatically booked in the SAP service order. Returns are sent to Yaskawa Europe's central repair center in Germany.

"Using MobileX-Dispatch and MobileX-MIP for Field Service has significantly improved data quality. Our dispatchers now plan more efficiently and the technicians can work more productively.

The time saved means they can now look after their customers more individually and comprehensively. This improves our service quality and customer satisfaction".

Norbert Weitzel, Team Lead European SAP Support at Yaskawa Europe, summarizes.