15-06-2013, 11:25 AM
The strategic planning of after-sales field service (ASFS) networks
ABSTRACT
The strategic planning of after-sales field service (ASFS) networks and their resources is of great importance for cost-efficient and profitable service businesses in the machine and plant engineering industry. Decisions that have to be made affect different areas such as manpower planning, facility location planning, service contract design or service process design. As most approaches published only consider different sub-problems of the ASFS network design and are quite theoretic in their nature, state of the art planning approaches in industry rely on rules-ofthumb decisions that lack the potential of boosting efficiency significantly to achieve operational excellence. Modeling and optimizing this complex system in an integrated way is a difficult and challenging task. In this paper we will review the different planning problems that arise from designing a ASFS network and give an outlook for a holistic approach that considers interdependencies between these sub-problems.