The survey of the current and planned future expenditures for diagnostics used in field
service clearly indicates that the overall service diagnostics market is currently sizable, in
the range of $2 billion as of 1997. This current expenditure and growth primarily will
occur in the electronics arena, but there is still substantial development and application
investments occurring in electromechanical and mechanical areas. The pace of investment
will fall off as the service industry shifts from development and experimental research to
the application and rollout of standard off-the-shelf technology. Thus, the overall pattern
of the diagnostics market indicates a continuing increase in expenditures by the fieldservice
industry for electronics-oriented service diagnostics and some increase with
respect to the application and use of this technology in electromechanical and mechanical
application areas.
The application and use of diagnostics technology will also be impacted by the ability
of the field service management community to recognize the need to search for an optimum
(as opposed to a feasible) solution in dispatch, assignment, call screening, call
avoidance, and logistics deployment. The further rollout of affordable wireless communications
technology such as Ardis and Ram mobile and the new cellular based CPDP
technology, coupled with the increased availability of inexpensive wireless based laptop,
portables, and CD ROM-based terminals, will increase the ability to provide an array of
powerful tools for diagnostics and repair directly to the service engineer in the field. This
ability to augment the diagnostics capability of the service engineer in the field, coupled
with the centralized application of artificial intelligence-based remote diagnostics for
helpdesk/TAC support that build upon, and make use of, an increasing array of data collected
within the integrated field service management system, could result in a significant
improvement in the positive impact of problem resolution and diagnostics technology in
field service (Figure 99-14). The new, integrated field service management systems provide
the basis for automatically collecting problem and symptom data and relating these
to the cause and corrective action information. As the availability of accurate and reliable
maintainability and repair data increases to meet the data requirements of the diagnostics
technology, the scene will be set for further significant improvements in the application
and use of diagnostic technology in the field service industry in the 21st century (Figure
99-15). As shown in the above analysis, cost justification of advanced problem resolution
and diagnostics technology clearly shows the value of this technology in improving service
productivity, efficiency, and profitability.
As the purchase and use of off-the-shelf software and predeveloped knowledge bases
prevails over expensive academically and research and development oriented diagnostics
applications, this technology will be broadly applied.