Service Part and Service Maintenance Database Background

Service parts require extensive documentation because of the need to capture information from service calls. Successive service calls (in addition to other research performed by the service technicians). This is of critical importance to service organizations, and the requirements for doing this would not seem to vary greatly from company to company. Desirable traits in this software would be:

1. The ability to easily update the service part data
2. A distributable web based system
3. Volume and security capabilities
4. The capability to handle image, video and audio files in addition to various document attachments

These are all capabilities met by a CMS or by blogging software like WordPress or Typepad. We were curious about how service parts and maintenance databases are being developed generally. What we found surprised us in that we did not find anywhere near the activity in this area that we expected.

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Nomenclature

It is important to recognize that this is not the only name for this type of software. It also goes by the name electronic parts catalog or EPC. We define this other term in this post.

http://spplan.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/electronic-parts-catalog-and-service-parts-databases/

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Generally Available Applications

Here are a few we ran into. One is called Aligni, which specializes in component management

You can test the trial yourself. However, they seem to be more of a parts management system rather than a part service management database. In fact the shortage of vendors or even announced programs in this area was erie. However, service parts are a greatly under-serviced market from a software perspective. If our initial research is correct, there are huge benefits to be received by using blogging software to build and maintain parts databases.

Another is called Engima, which develops service parts databases for purchasing decision support. They create what is known in the industry as an electronic part catalog which is then used as the basis for the purchasing engine.

http://www.aligni.com

http://www.enigma.com

Interaction with Planning Applications

The service part and service maintenance database interact with the planning system in some cases. But in others cases they do not. For instance, the transaction system can feed both the service part planning system and the service part maintenance database (SPMDB)

SAP Equipment Master

There is some confusion, which is only encouraged by SAP product marketing, that the SAP Plant Maintenance module maintains a capability in service management. Their argument is supported by the master data object called the Equipment Master. The equipment master is to the service part what the material master is to the finished good. The equipment master has a very large number of fields. However, while SAP proposes that the equipment master can be pushed out to a portal to allow for the creation of a service maintenance database, the SAP Portal is not designed for this purpose.

A Logical Design

What makes the most sense for clients that use SAP ERP (or other transaction processing software) is to integrate the service parts database with blog software and to periodically bring across new parts to the SPMDB and not worry about sending the maintenance data back to SAP ERP.

Conclusion

The lack of focus or commitment of resources into developing service parts maintenance databases is strange and a missed opportunity. We can not say for sure, but we can imagine how service part maintenance databases may have become commingled with Product Life Cycle management. We hope that is not the case, as PLM is focused on the beginning of a product’s life, service parts maintenance databases are focused on the end, and are really a different animal.