Case Study
ATB WATER increases order throughput by 28.5% with VISITOUR and MOBILE FLOW
As a specialist and market leader for decentralized and semi-centralized wastewater systems, good service is part of the business for ATB WATER. With VISITOUR and MOBILE FLOW, the performance of the technical field service has been significantly increased.
The company: Specialist for decentralized and semi-centralized wastewater systems
Water is one of the most valuable raw materials of the 21st century. As a human factor, however, we contribute significantly to water pollution. The focus of our society is changing, and thus the sustainable and resource-efficient use of water is coming to the fore.
The ATB WATER GmbH, headquartered in Porta Westfalica and with four other locations in Europe and the USA, has set this focus as its corporate goal. For over 25 years, ATB WATER has positioned itself as a globally active specialist and market leader for decentralized and semi-centralized wastewater systems – from standardized small sewage treatment plants to application-specific solutions for food processing or the tourism sector, through to components for equipping sewage treatment plants, for “a world with clean water.”
The project: Customer service and predictive maintenance at a new level
With more than 100,000 installed small sewage treatment plants, which clean the wastewater of more than 500,000 people, good customer service and regular, predictive maintenance are essential.
To ensure this, ATB WATER decided as early as 2013 to plan its technical field service in Germany with VISITOUR, thereby ensuring reliable wastewater treatment through regular and proactive maintenance. With the expansion to MOBILE FLOW in 2014, customer service was taken to another level.
Technicians have all the necessary order information and optimally equipped service vehicles containing all relevant spare parts, and they communicate transparently to the customer when they will arrive. Different skills, whether waste management specialists or electricians, are also taken into account for the various order types.
Fully automated planning processes
In early summer 2020, ATB Water Customer Service Manager Kevin Wintergrün and Solvares Field Service Project Manager Gregor Lausberg worked together to analyze simple ways to optimize the entire process chain. In doing so, they identified a variety of points that, in combination, create a recipe for success:
- Derivation of the company’s target definition for the technical field service
- Operationalization of goals and consideration of potential goal conflicts
- Transformation into supporting systemic planning criteria for VISITOUR
- Intensive training for planners on providing competent support when answering ad-hoc inquiries in daily business using VISITOUR
Through the identified and fully implemented measures, the planners gained a stronger understanding of and trust in the VISITOUR solution and the underlying POWEROPT planning algorithm.
Test series for knowledge building
Test series and experimental levels represent a major advantage of the software and service at Solvares Field Service. This allowed the employees of ATB WATER GmbH to put the measures described and developed above to the test using “real” data. Through parallel intensive discussions with Solvares Field Service project manager Gregor Lausberg, all scenarios could be tested, resulting in an extremely successful subsequent go-live of the measures..
Efficiency increases through clever monitoring
In the fourth quarter of 2020, standardized extensions were integrated and taken live fully and without complications. The additionally established monitoring now provides important key data from which valuable insights are derived to enable further efficiency increases. Despite the restrictions caused by the Corona pandemic and the onboarding of new employees, an increase compared to the same period of the previous year was achieved.
Kevin Wintergrün, Customer Service Manager at ATB WATER, describes the effect as follows:
Further optimizations
All parties involved are currently working together on optimizations in reporting and the integration of new technical possibilities.
This forms the basis for further service expansion and the broadening of the service spectrum. For the implementation with MOBILE FLOW, efficient processes are naturally also taken into account so that the technicians at ATB WATER can be supported even better.
We are excited to see what further results we can record after the expansion of the service spectrum. Optimization is a continuous process. VISITOUR brings this DNA as standard for us,” says a pleased Kevin Wintergrün.
Gregor Lausberg, project lead and consultant at Solvares Field Service, also highlights the collaboration: “VISITOUR is a brilliant instrument, and like any instrument, it takes time, curiosity, team spirit, and determination to make it sound its best. ATB Water possesses all the criteria to make new, optimized results resonate today and tomorrow.”
What You Can Take away from this for your Service
All trademarks mentioned or displayed on this website are the property of their respective trademark owners.
Results
- Fast and reliable appointment scheduling
- Saving significant time resources for the customer
- Reduction of planning efforts in scheduling
- Efficiency increases through clever monitoring
- Increased transparency of service processes
- Expansion of the service spectrum
- Increase in order throughput by 28.5%
Start Your Project
Would you like to achieve such results? Let’s talk.
We’ll show you how to optimize your service.