Avoiding Device Failure: How to Reduce Downtime by 80% (or more)

Transcription

1 Avoiding Device Failure: How to Reduce Downtime by 80% (or more)

2 Contents 1 Introduction 2 Predictive Technology Overview 4 Predictive Service [Part 1]: The Evolution 8 Predictive Service [Part 2]: 5 Key Benefits of Alert Management System (AMS) 12 Predictive Service [Part 3]: How To Reduce Downtime by 80% (or more) 14 Predictive Service in Action 17 Summary 19 Your Next Step 20 About Flo-Tech Avoiding Device Failure: How to Reduce Downtime by 80% (or more)

3 Let s face it. When it comes to managing your print service... You don t want downtime. Or to be inconvenienced. And most of all you don t want to keep your customers waiting. All you want is for your device to work. But in the normal service environment, when a device breaks, you call a technician to come and fix it. 1 You re reacting to a situation. And most likely you ll have to wait for hours sometimes days. That s because the device isn t being monitored; or it s because there s no automation involved. The result? Everything becomes a fire drill. An emergency. And chaos prevails.

4 So what s the solution? 2 Predictive technology. A better alternative to the reactive model of device maintenance and repair is to leverage today s technology and use monitoring tools, data and analytics to be more proactive and predictive (as opposed to reactive). Predictive technology is the next evolution in managed print services. Predictive technology creates order out of chaos. Predictive technology has been around since the 1960s, when the first missions to the moon started. NASA needed to monitor its devices and have redundancies in place; the engineers wanted to make sure they prevented the components of their spacecraft from failing. Over time, predictive technology spread to other industries The aerospace industry adopted predictive technology for jet engines: Jet engines are monitored so that when a part is going to fail, the maintenance crew can replace that part before it does. Take a look at the medical industry. The medical industry uses predictive technology to monitor medical devices day and night. Can you imagine a medical team in the middle of surgery waiting hours for a service technician to arrive with parts for a broken device? Other industries using predictive technology include HVAC and automobile manufacturers. Through Flo-Tech s Predictive Service, if a device appears to be failing, a service tech is dispatched with the proper components to repair the faulty machine before it actually fails. This reduces (or nearly eliminates) most of the customer s downtime and reduces (or nearly eliminates) the need for reacting at the last minute.

5 3 With this Ebook, you ll discover how Predictive Service can benefit your business by: Reducing the need to call the help desk and create service tickets Fixing devices right the first time Reducing emergency calls Creating a disruption-free business Increasing productivity Reducing device downtime by 80% (or more) Let s get moving, shall we?

6 Predictive Service [Part 1]: The Evolution of Predictive Service does this sound familiar? you re on deadline. you go to use a device. and sure enough it fails. that s not too surprising, right? 4 That s what devices and copiers do; they print, jam and break. And when a device breaks, everything becomes a fire drill Chaos erupts. Productivity shuts down. So you call your print service provider, pleading for immediate help. The response? You wind up waiting four, maybe eight hours for a tech to arrive. Worse you could wait for days. This is a reactive service. Reactive service is the first of four print management service levels, culminating in predictive service: 1. Reactive service: you call a service provider after a device fails. 2. PReventative service: devices are put on a regular maintenance schedule. 3. ams (alert ManageMent system) service: devices send service alerts to you. 4. PRedictive service: service happens before anyone or any device alerts you.

7 5 1 Reactive service Reactive service occurs when you call your service provider after a device goes down. What typically happens in a reactive situation? The tech visits the customer and decides repairs are needed. The tech goes back to the office. The service provider prepares an estimate for the customer. The customer says yes or no to the repairs. Parts get ordered. The tech goes back to the customer and repairs the device. That s not an efficient process, is it? That s because reactive service is disruptive. It s disruptive for the: Customer Community IT team (because they have to supervise the service provider) The customer s end user Think about when a company with 400 or 500 devices has problems it can get chaotic in seconds! 2 Preventative service Preventative service occurs when a service provider comes out to your organization on a regular schedule, for example once a year. Technicians perform preventative maintenance and use the necessary resources to keep your whole fleet up and running whether the devices need service or not. A more strategic way to handle preventative maintenance is through activity-based cleaning. activity-based cleaning uses page volume to determine the maintenance schedule. For instance, if a printer printed X pages before needing service, every three months a tech gets dispatched to check those machines that have printed the same page volume and haven t had a service call. In this case, the maintenance and cleaning are based on the device s activity, which is less disruptive and more effective for the customer.

8 3 Alert Management System (AMS) service In the Alert Management System model, automation enters the picture. With AMS, we can detect the maintenance needed before the machine displays any problems. 6 Instead of looking at the page volume, which uses a little bit of analytics, AMS looks at the alerts that the devices are feeding the network and reacts as quickly as possible to fix any issues before the end user experiences problems. Here s an example: Let s say the maintenance kit light goes on. Before AMS, people usually ignored the maintenance kit light until the image quality was horrible then it became an emergency. Eventually, a service call was placed. This approach is hyper-reactive because it uses data and analytics to look for patterns. Since AMS looks for patterns, paper jams become more predictable AMS enables the device to communicate problems to Flo-Tech s server. Then, our server makes the decision about what to do. If a service call is required, it automatically creates that call. In short, AMS: Is (somewhat) hyper-reactive Eliminates human interaction Looks for patterns Is not totally predictive, but moves toward a predictive model

9 4 Predictive Service Predictive Service takes all of the known historical device data and projects when a component or a device is most likely to fail. It sets thresholds prior to a device breaking down. Flo-Tech s Predictive Service evolved out of the reactive service environment in which a tech would arrive to an account, service the device, and then leave. That s when Flo-Tech set out to develop Predictive Service Predictive Service looks at the device data and says, Okay, we installed this part, which we know usually lasts about 50,000 pages. By monitoring the device (or predicting the page volume trends), we could say this component is probably going to fail by this date. 7 But because the customer has such a large fleet of devices, the tech would often get called back into the customer s office soon after the service, requiring service for a different device. One day, one of our technicians said, It s great knowing which machine is jamming today, but why don t you tell me which machine is going to fail tomorrow? That way when I m there, I don t have to park and go through security again I don t have to do all the things that inconvenience the customer. We developed Predictive Service so we can dispatch a technician who is properly trained, has the right parts and has time to fix a device before it ever fails. You ll learn more about Predictive Service and how it can help your organization reduce downtime by 80% (or more) in Part 3. But before we dive into the world of predictive technology, it s important to take a closer look at how AMS works and how it helped shape Predictive Service; that s coming up in Part 2, 5 Key Benefits of Alert Management System.

10 Predictive Service [Part 2]: 5 Key Benefits of Alert Management System (AMS) 8 Devices today are capable of reporting all kinds of information. For instance, let s say you re low on paper or toner. Or perhaps there s a paper jam or some kind of error code. If you were to turn on alerts for a single device, throughout one day you could potentially receive (or even more) notifications from that device telling you what its status is. Can you imagine turning on alerts for a fleet of 100 devices (or even 1,000 devices)? Can you imagine how quickly you would become inundated with alerts? You d soon shut them off, right? And that s what customers tend to do. I m drowning in alerts over here!! So when a customer calls us, we ask them: Have you turned on your HP Web Jetadmin alerts? Many of them say, Yes, we did but we turned them off within an hour because the alerts were overpowering us. With all those alerts happening, customers feel like they re drinking from a fire hose! But there is a way out. t h e s o l u t i o n? alert Management system (ams) AMS is a platform that can be used to remotely monitor a customer s printing and imaging fleet. It s designed to recognize the failure of a device and react faster than end users. AMS is also designed to tie seemingly unassociated events together (e.g., error patterns) and thereby predict some device failures, such as paper jams. The most important thing to remember about AMS is that it s truly machine-to-machine communication there is no human involvement. It does everything in an automated fashion; that means a service tech can be dispatched without any human intervention.

11 let s go behind the scenes and look at the five key benefits of alert ManageMent system (ams) 1. alerts 9 With AMS, you can set up your network devices to send all alerts to the AMS server via . That means it s highly efficient and doesn t require a lot of bandwidth on the customer s network. In fact, AMS receives 500,000 s a month from customer devices, generating over six million data points a year for fact gathering. When alerts are received at the AMS server, many action items can be accomplished. The easiest item is an notification. With AMS, we re able to the customer with a message saying, Hi, Joe. The printer on the fourth floor in Conference Room B is running low on toner. You can change it now. The best part about alerts? They are customizable right down to the level of the serial number of any device. So whenever the CEO s office says that its machine is jammed, AMS is flexible enough to send an every time that machine jams. Again, in this instance, we re not servicing the device, we re just notifying the customer. 2. Dispatch technicians Whenever an alert occurs, AMS can dispatch a technician 24/7. Once AMS sees an alert, it creates a call in our system automatically saving customers time and money.

12 3. Watch List 10 The next thing AMS can do is to put a device on the Watch List. For example, take the classic paper jam. The Watch List is unique in that most customer environments have multiple people printing to a network printer. Imagine there are five people associated with a particular device. And over a couple of days, each of those five people experiences a paper jam but no one places a service call for repairs. With AMS, each paper jam is recorded. Because of the first paper jam, the device is put on the Watch List. On the third instance of error, AMS automatically creates a ticket so that anyone can investigate the paper path issues within that device. 4. Dashboards AMS dashboards give us visual displays that show the performance of specific devices. For instance, let s say a customer wants to see all the devices that are in the low toner state. By looking at the dashboard, we can instantly tell which devices need servicing; yellow would highlight a device that had been in a low toner state for longer than an hour; red would indicate that a device had been in a low toner state for more than three hours. 5. Database (reports) All alerts go into the AMS database, and those alerts are used for analytics and statistics.

13 Two scenarios: without AMS and with AMS Here s a typical scenario without AMS: The same scenario with AMS 11 Imagine there s a maintenance kit alert and the customer doesn t replace the maintenance kit. (The customer didn t pay attention to the alarm.) Eventually, the customer has an image quality problem. So the customer calls the service provider and says, We have an image quality problem. The service provider sends a technician. The tech will get there at some point in time it could be upwards of eight hours. When the tech arrives on-site, the tech may or may not have the necessary parts on hand to fix the device right the first time. If the tech doesn t fix the device right the first time, the tech has to go back again and the device is still down. With AMS, a service call is created before the event even happens. Because we re monitoring the maintenance kit, we ve prevented the image quality from ever getting out of hand because we already sent the technician out. In most cases, the only downtime the customer sees is the actual repair time an industry average of one hour. s u M M a R y alert Management system (ams): Creates a closed loop communication system, reducing chaos Reduces printer support requirements Creates service tickets automatically Reduces the volume of help desk calls Reduces labor, overhead and personnel costs Bypasses people and reduces the time needed to correct problems Alerts clients through Improves device availability and customer productivity through Watch Lists Fixes problems the first time techs arrive with the right parts Now that we ve explored reactive, preventative and AMS services, are you ready to explore the next evolution in managed print services... Predictive Service?

14 Predictive Service [Part 3]: How to Reduce Device Downtime by 80% (or more) As soon as a jet engine starts, all kinds of data are monitored. By monitoring various types of data, an airline carrier can optimize the performance of its jetliners. On the other hand, if an airplane is sitting on the ground needing repairs that airline carrier is losing money. What is Predictive Service? Predictive Service takes real-time historical data along with device information and predicts when a device component (or something else) will fail. Flo-Tech s extensive service experience lets us understand failure rates like: 12 To reduce downtime, airline carriers leverage predictive technology If problems are detected that could cause a component to fail in the very near future, predictive technology tells the airline carrier to schedule and dispatch a maintenance person before the plane lands. When the plane lands, the tech is already at the gate with the right parts, making the necessary component repair proactively getting that jetliner back up in the air as soon as possible. Imagine. A jet engine component fails at 30,000 feet. Or a CEO s printer fails. Either way, the event is a crisis. A crisis easily eliminated by using Predictive Service. On average, how often a particular make/model will require service (e.g., every 40,000 pages) On average, how long certain assemblies within a make/model will last (this is referred to as the assembly s yield; e.g., the fuser lasts 90,000 pages) Knowing these things along with the service history of a specific unit allows Flo-Tech to build a formulaic approach to determining when service will most likely be needed (e.g., the percent likelihood of failure based on known failure rates and print volume). Predictive Service also allows Flo-Tech to dispatch a service technician to resolve the issue before the device fails.

15 13 Here s a good way to think about Predictive Service The average copier has anywhere from counters in it. Think of a counter as a gas gauge. These gas gauges can register full and empty. Now, take those hundreds of counters and multiply them by the number of devices you re monitoring, and you ll get into the tens of thousands quickly; that s because you re looking at so much information an impossible task. What we re doing with Predictive Service is looking at all those gas gauges with computers not people. Predictive Service can tell when you re going to reach empty based on how much you re driving or, in this case, how much you re printing. Predictive Service is about learning patterns Take a component like the swing plate. HP doesn t publish a yield saying the swing plate needs to be replaced every million pages, but Predictive Service discovers that yield over time. That component is then added to the device s profile of what gets replaced. So this principle can be applied to a component that doesn t even have a counter; that s because we know from history that the average swing plate is going to last one million pages. Predictive Service then goes to the next level We know which inventory items the device needs, based on the device s history. Does it need: A fuser? A transfer roller? A swing plate? A combination of components? Predictive Service is able to look into a technician s real-time parts inventory to see if that tech has the components needed to make that repair. So Predictive Service is not creating another activity it s making sure that the tech has all the right qualifications and parts when arriving at the customer s office. In short, Predictive Service gives us detailed specifics so the device is fixed right the first time.

16 Predictive Service in Action Let s say there are two identical devices that have the same model number with the same manufacturer-stated yields. One device is in a law firm where they use heavy and thick paper, which would wear more heavily on the device; the other model is in a human resource department using regular copy paper. Predictive Service has the intelligence to know that the device with the heavy paper will break more often, because that paper wears down the components faster than in the scenario with the HR department using regular copy paper. Over time, Predictive Service sees the differences in performance and will adjust accordingly on an ongoing basis. 14 Here s a graph visualizing Predictive Service.

17 How is Predictive Service different from AMS? 15 Imagine three users all using one group printer. Mary printed to the group printer and had a jam. She removed her jam, finished her job and walked away without placing a service call. She didn t think anything of it because copiers copy, print and jam. Joe did the same thing an hour later, and Fred did the same thing the next day. No one s connecting the dots and saying, Hey, something s starting to fail in this device. AMS connects those dots, notices a pattern and generates a service call while dispatching a technician. Predictive Service, on the other hand, knows how many pages a device is running per day. It knows what components need to be replaced and at what intervals. Predictive Service equates that to how many days we re estimating before that component fails and making sure that the tech notices it and schedules a service call prior to the estimated failure date.

18 16 Response time WITHOuT Predictive Service You re in the office. Your boss says, I need seven copies collated and stapled. You press print and your device displays an error code and you can t fix it. So you call the help desk, place a call to the service provider and wait for your technician to respond, based on your contract s SLA (service level agreement) response time. We ll use a typical four-hour response time for this example. The device failed at 9:00 a.m., and that s when you placed the service call. The technician arrives at 1:00 p.m. When the tech arrives, the tech might or might not have the parts needed to repair the device. After working on it for one hour, the tech has fixed the device, and you re back up and running. Your downtime? Five hours. Response time WITH Predictive Service Looking at the Predictive Service application, the tech notices that a device has a component that is likely to fail within the next few days. The tech then services that device before it goes down. The downtime for that device? One hour. The difference between five hours downtime and one hour of downtime? 80 percent.

19 Summary With Predictive Service, your company runs more efficiently and with fewer disruptions. Here are several key benefits that can be realized when your organization uses Predictive Service: 17 Devices rarely go down without warning Downtime is minimized to repair time only Emergency calls are avoided Devices are fixed the first time the tech arrives avoiding unnecessary follow-ups Service calls can be group-scheduled based on location, saving time Devices needing service match the company s criteria and goals not what the tech thinks Overall customer involvement is reduced by (up to) 40 percent

20 Conclusion We covered a lot of ground in this Ebook, didn t we? We reviewed four managed print service models: 1. Reactive 2. Preventative 3. Alert Management System 4. Predictive We saw how Reactive Service decreases device uptime. That s because the customer calls at the moment a device fails. The result? A four-to-six-hour on-site wait time. 2. Preventative Service, the second model, minimizes downtime and disruption to an organization (and its community). The goal of preventative service is to keep devices operating at peak performance. It uses activity-based cleaning, which is based on page volumes, industry thresholds, and Flo-Tech s knowledge base of the device s service history. 3. In the third model, Alert Management System (AMS), we discovered how AMS is the platform for remote monitoring. AMS reacts faster than end users can react, and predicts some device failures based on error patterns. We also learned that AMS automatically creates service calls and dispatches a technician, eliminating human interaction. 4. Finally, we learned how Predictive Service anticipates device failures and prevents (or significantly minimizes) downtime for the customer. For example, we saw how Predictive Service reduces downtime by 80 percent. We also learned how Predictive Service monitors thousands of devices and assemblies and individually estimates the days until the devices reach the point of failure.

21 Your Next Step Today s competitive landscape drives organizations to look for creative ways to reduce expenses and do more with less. Flo-Tech is driving innovations in managed print service (MPS) delivery that reduce costs, reduce support requirements and reduce downtime. Together we can develop the right MPS implementation strategy for you. To assess your needs, request a free (no-obligation) print management consultation by calling us at Or you can download our Managed Print services assessment Process. Begin learning about our managed print services assessment process, including the: 1. Assessment and Analysis 2. Discovery Process and Findings 3. Implementation 4. Ongoing Management The Flo-Tech team is ready to answer your questions. 19 subscribe to flo-tech s blog When you receive Flo-Tech s blog updates, you and more than 3,200 other smart CIOs will get the latest managed print service articles delivered right to your inbox. Start discovering: How to manage your print costs (even on a tight budget) Why optimizing your work flow is easier than you think How to secure your print environment And more to subscribe, go to and enter your address in the box.

22 About Flo-Tech We re experts at printing, imaging and document-driven processes experts with over 20 years of experience assessing, managing, servicing and supporting printing and imaging fleets of all sizes and varying levels of complexity. Our Managed Print Services include: Cost and productivity assessments Printing and imaging fleet management and ongoing optimization with regular performance reviews 20 Our proven expertise in providing services and related software solutions can help you overcome printing challenges and improve performance, so you can succeed in today s competitive landscape. Because we are pioneers in the managed print services industry, you can rely on Flo-Tech s skills, knowledge and experience to support your print environment and provide a comprehensive, strategic approach to making your business and document processes more efficient. Automating support and simplifying processes to reduce administration costs Meeting environmental improvement objectives The latest technology solutions and deployment to enhance information security, workflow and productivity Service level agreements, Predictive Service and proactive support options to improve fleet performance Our mission throughout our client relationships is to continually look for ways to reduce overall expenses and increase productivity. Why choose Flo-Tech? Pick a trusted partner, not a Vendor: Analytical Resource Comprehensive Enterprise Solutions Innovative & Flexible High Quality Service: Proactive & Predictive Award-winning, Patented Technology Flo-Tech Connect: Customer Portal Flexible Hardware Solutions Freedom Plan Cartridge Remanufacturer: 10 patents

23 A Few of Our Clients 21 contact us: Middle Street, Middletown CT facebook.com/flotechmps twitter.com/flotechmps linkedin.com/company/flo-tech 2015 FLO-TECH LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED