[Business Today｜Trend Report] Challenges for the Manufacturing Services in the Post Pandemic Era

• Original resource

【Business Today】

In the post-epidemic era, the manufacturing service industry is facing multiple challenges. In addition to the long-term proposition of smart manufacturing and digital transformation and upgrading that must be considered in order to break away from the image of production, how can the manufacturing service industry maintain stable operations in the face of global productivity instability, labor shortages, transportation problems and delivery delays, the international situation, and the effect of the war in Russia and Ukraine due to the new epidemic? Kyoden's General Manager, Mr. Huang Defeng, believes that it is important to take the step of introducing digital management tools to help the manufacturing services industry break through the challenges in the post-epidemic era.

He is confident that Kyoden has a track record of selling more than 3,000 units since its establishment, and its after-sales service is not sloppy either. Kyoden has the original technical authorization for key components and provides a complete technical service center and after-sales technical support. 73% of Kyoden's employees are in the technical service team. They emphasize on quick repair or maintenance service within two hours, and maintain a sufficient stock of repair parts for a long time. In addition, Kyoden is the only company in Taiwan that can repair fiber optic laser source equipment and CO2 lasers on site.

Precisely because of the trust of international manufacturers and the mission to improve after-sales service, coupled with the epidemic's catalyst for remote communication and digital efficiency, Kyoden chose to introduce MDS's ServiceJDC in 2021, according to Huang.

The mission of ServiceJDC, launched by MDS, is to lead enterprises into a highly efficient mobile office generation, especially helping field staff to sign in and out on various platforms, task reporting, approval forms,customer management, business management, maintenance equipment and contract management, statistical analysis, and other operations, centralizing all information in the cloud for unified management, realizing the value of digital office and intelligent analysis.

Huang Defeng said that Kyoden’s commitment and responsibility to customers has always been how to ensure normal and stable production of customers’ equipment to create production capacity. Kyoden‘s services include: laser source internal and external maintenance of laser processing machine automation system, ice water machine maintenance, annual laser accuracy calibration, tooth row accuracy calibration and maintenance, all-electric folding bed, regular maintenance of laser welding system, unscheduled on-site technical support and maintenance, training, machine relocation, new machine installation, troubleshooting of remote telephone technical support, annual contract delivery, supply of consumables and parts, etc. There are quite a few projects. In the past, customers mainly contacted them through Line@ and customer service calls, and then transferred to the managers to assign tasks to engineers. After the engineers went out, they would fill in a paper maintenance report triple sheet. After completion, they would leave one of the paper documents to the customer. These triple sheets may be returned to the corporate headquarters by the engineer within 3-5 days. Only then can the relevant statistics of after-sales service cases be carried out, including service content, time spent, parts usage and inventory statistics, etc. Time-consuming paper-based operations reduce the efficiency of service and operations management.

According to Mr. Huang, the adoption of ServiceJDC has directly improved the efficiency of engineer attendance services and statistical operations. Kyoden has turned the traditional paper maintenance report triplet into a digital form in ServiceJDC. Engineers only need to create a task on the mobile application and fill out the digital maintenance report form, then ask the customer an electronic signature, and then they can directly upload all the data from the field task. By making full use of the accumulated database for analysis, Kyoden's managers are able to fully grasp the status of their customers' equipment and services in real time, achieving the win-win results with their customers.

With ServiceJDC, the data become more friendly and convenient. Mr. Huang said, at present, the managers can regularly review these real-time task data to keep track of each customer‘s equipment repair, the total number of different operation types and the efficiency of the engineer’s tasks, and to give the engineer regular performance evaluations. In this way, the all assessment can be based on complete data and information.

Mr. Huang said that ServiceJDC were now fully adopted, including engineers and management staff. He said that with ServiceJDC's real-time statistics, they are able to keep track of parts inventories and call for deliveries earlier, whether it's an epidemic, a delay in delivery, or a global logistical disruption caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine.

In addition, we are looking forward to integrating ServiceJDC with more management services in the future, for example, setting automatic reminders directly for customers' regular maintenance, or even calling out service history data through ServiceJDC to browse customers' maintenance frequency, parts requirements, purchasing suggestions, etc. during contract renewal and exchange.