Speaker: Lee Whiteley, DTS Regional Field Operations Manager, AkzoNobel
Lee Whiteley: Hi there. My name's Lee Whiteley. I'm a regional field operations manager with AkzoNobel. I look after a team of field service engineers spread out throughout the UK and Ireland; and looking after all aspects of the tinting business for AkzoNobel.
Describe the legacy processes for performing your role prior to using mInventory.
Lee Whiteley: Before using Innovapptive's mobile solutions, everything was basically laptop-based which doesn't lend itself handily to working in the field. Since using the mobile solutions, I think our guys in the field have more spanner time as you like to say. So all admin et cetera is captured in the field against the correct customer. Using the mobile applications frees a lot of time up and just allows the guys to get on with what they should be doing, which is fixing and servicing our customers equipment.
What challenges existed with your legacy processes?
Lee Whiteley: The biggest challenge before using mInventory was stocktaking the engineer's vehicles. This would happen once a year and would involve a lot of time and effort on everyone's part. For the field service, for the field managers, this would involve traveling to visit physically, the engineer, and then stock counting every material on the vehicle. This could take up to a day and a half, two days including traveling. And then once the stock count was physically completed, you would then have to return home or to the office and then input that stock count into the SAP CS system. It's very time consuming for all involved. But since using, starting with using mInventory, we've introduced cycle count to the engineers. This just happens on a weekly basis. A certain amount of materials are flagged for counting each week. The engineer then proceeds to count plus the cycle count. This whole task for 10 engineers is over and done with within an hour per week. We carry this out throughout the whole year so that all the engineers' materials are counted throughout the year. And this leads us to a greater accuracy on an ongoing basis. We then can ad hoc count high value materials and high usage materials to make sure that those counts are accurate and we are keeping track of our high value items.
How is mInventory making your job easier?
Lee Whiteley: Using mInventory has made the life of the field service engineer a lot simpler, especially with regards to stock management. He has the ability to check his actual stock levels on the system against what he physically has. Check his neighboring engineers. If he doesn't have the correct part, he can quickly check if his neighbor has it and then make a run to get that material. Receiving in goods is a lot more simple now, no paperwork involved - just directly onto the tablet as cycle counting as well has increased the simplicity and the speed of which we can carry out stock checks throughout the year.
How has your experience been using mInventory?
Lee Whiteley: The user experience for mInventory is very, very good. The app itself is easy to use. It's very intuitive in three sections. Stock management, good receiving, and cycle counting. It's all very self explanatory, user driven. Absolutely fantastic tool for the guys out in the field and an excellent product.
