Business requirements for reverse logistics are complex, and can change as relationships with customers, distributors and contractors shift over time.
Larry Laux is senior vice president at IFS North America
Dealers, Contractors, Efficient Repairs and the Bottom Line
Problem 3: Handling dealers and contractors – Complexity increases further when it extends beyond a company’s own service organizations to third parties like contractors, subcontractors or distributors that participate in aftermarket support.
As the distributor buys a particular subassembly, they might build it into their own product assembly, or they might sell it directly to their customers. They might send boxes of 10 of these repairable components back to the manufacturer’s repair facility. Software for reverse logistics needs to take into account the nature and quality of that business relationship. When there is a good business relationship with that outside entity, rules can be set up in the software to advance replacement parts to them when they simply notify us that they are sending the repairable units through a return material authorization.
When the replacement parts are advanced to the dealer or contractor, the system still needs to keep track of whether they did in fact send their 10 defective units back. So it is equally important to create another business rule that specifies that the distributor gets, for instance, up to 10 days to send the defective subassemblies back. And then when that date is at risk of passing, send a notification to the right individuals to ensure the parts come back into inventory.
Keeping track of this level of reverse logistics interaction between trading parties on a manual basis or even in some computerized systems not specifically designed for the task is impossible. The ability to avoid losing track of products in a reverse logistics value chain, even when they are out at a third party, is a very important financial consideration and must be a consideration in selecting software to handle these functions.
Problem 4: Driving efficiency in repair processes – Software used for reverse logistics can also streamline work in the depot repair environment through the use of visualization – videos or drawings that demonstrate to the repair technician how the work is to be performed.
Software can provide a short video or tutorial to the engineer on the bench. We can illustrate how a given component is disassembled, how you would do a preventive maintenance cleaning, or make a required adjustment. So we are able to take someone who is perhaps not as skilled on a product and let them, through the use of these visualization tools, get a quick tutorial so that they can actually work on products even as they are getting over their learning curve.
Reverse logistics software can include video tutorials for bench techs, compressing the learning curve for specific repair processes.
When software accommodates the reverse logistics process to this extent, a company can get much more productivity out of their engineers then they could before.
The Bottom Line
Business requirements for reverse logistics are complex, and can change as relationships with customers, distributors and contractors shift over time. Apart from the problems mentioned above, software ought to be able to solve challenges related to collecting quality information across the reverse logistics process, tracking and managing re-repairs and repair of sub-components independent of the main assembly. But with the right technology, all of these challenges can be surmounted so you can concentrate on profitably serving your customer.
Larry Laux is the senior vice president at IFS North America, where he is responsible for growing the company’s footprint in the field service management software industry. He came to IFS as the CEO of Metrix, the leading field service management software vendor IFS acquired in 2012.
