Scheduler Spares Int

Oracle Advanced Scheduler and Spares Management Integration

An Oracle White Paper By John Moore and Srinivas Ramakuri January 2008

ii

Table of Contents

Introduction to Oracle Advanced Scheduler ...………………………. 1

An Overview of How Scheduler Works ….…………………………… 4

Introduction to Spares Management ………………………………… 10

Scheduler and Spares Management Integration …………………… 12

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INTRODUCTION TO ORACLE ADVANCED SCHEDULER

The purpose of this white paper is to provide both an introduction to Release

12 Oracle Advanced Scheduler and it’s integration with Spares Management.

The first two sections of the white paper will cover an overview of Oracle

Advanced Scheduler. The integration with Spares Management will follow in a

later section.

Oracle Advanced Scheduler provides functionality to assign field service tasks

and create technician schedules that both meet customer service objectives and

minimize total operating costs. Oracle Advanced Scheduler considers a wide

variety of configurable constraints, business rules, service objectives, and costs

in the scheduling process. Oracle Advanced Scheduler is a key component of

the Oracle E Business Field Service Solution that also includes Core Field

Service, Spares Management, Mobile Field Service and Preventative

Maintenance modules.

Costs are low and customer satisfaction high when the right technician arrives

at the customer site with the right parts. Oracle Advanced Scheduler considers

multiple scheduling criteria including map based travel time and distance,

overtime, skill requirements customer access hours, contracted response times,

and parts availability. The Oracle Advanced Scheduler performance comes

from a combination of advanced algorithms and tight integration to the Field

Service Dispatch Center, Spares Management, Mobile Field Service, Customer

Service, Service Contracts, Asset Tracking, Order Management, Inventory and

the CRM Foundation Modules.

Mobile Field Service and the Technician Portal, which include much of the

scheduling and spares functionality shown, will not be covered in the white

paper.

For the balance of the white paper Oracle Advanced Scheduler or OAS will be

referred to simply as Scheduler.

Automated and Interactive Scheduling Tools

Scheduling tools with flexible levels of automation to support most field service

operational models and industries are provided. The scheduling tools are

provided in two basic modes: Autonomous and Interactive.

Autonomous Scheduler is a query driven engine that can be run automatically

on a schedule or initiated manually from the Field Service Dispatch Center.

Autonomous Scheduler will automatically select the best technician for the task

and schedule that technician in a way that minimizes total cost.


Interactive Scheduler identifies scheduling options and costs and presents

those options to the user in order of lowest cost or start date. It is accessible

from Oracle Customer Service and the Field Service Dispatch Center so both

customer service agents and field service dispatchers can schedule tasks and

book customer appointments.

Interactive scheduler can also be accessed from Oracle Mobile Field Service

Wireless application and 12.1 Field Service Technician Portal so the field

technician can schedule tasks while onsite with the customer. This is especially

critical in environments where technicians create follow-up tasks that need

parts to complete that task. The availability of those parts becomes a critical

scheduling factor for the follow-up task.

Eligible technicians and Skills Qualification

Scheduler uses the Oracle Territories module to locate technicians eligible for a

task using both geographic (city, state, zip, etc.) and non-geographic (product,

service type, problem code, customer etc.) qualifiers. In addition to Territories,

preferred and excluded technicians defined in the Installed Base and Service

Contracts, are used to identify technicians eligible for a task assignment.

Once the technician pool for a task has been identified, Scheduler filters out

technicians that do not have the skills required to execute the task.

Schedule Options

When identifying scheduling options for a task, Scheduler will consider: service

level agreement, eligible technicians as defined above, technician availability,

customer access hours and parts availability.

Costing the Options

Scheduler calculates a relative cost for each scheduling option using cost

parameters that includes both customer service and operating costs. The cost

factor values can be configured to meet the unique business objectives of the

field service operation.

Autonomous Scheduler automatically selects the lowest cost option while the

Interactive Scheduler presents various scheduling plan options ordered by cost

in ascending order.

Travel Time and Distance Calculation

Scheduler uses street level map data to calculate travel distance and time. Road

types and average travel speeds for each road type is considered in the travel


time calculation. When this level of accuracy is not required, Scheduler can use

point-to-point (as the crow flies) travel calculations or a default travel time.

Scheduling Tasks with Spare Part Requirements

Spares Management is a Field Service module that provides both the planning

and logistics functionality to manage a service parts inventory.

Functionality is available in Spares Management to determine the parts required

for a task and the probability or likelihood a part will be required for a product

and task combination.

Scheduler is integrated with Oracle Spares Management to insure that

technician schedules are coordinated with the availability of required parts.

When the parts required for a task are known, Scheduler uses parts availability

as a constraint and will not schedule a task for a technician until those parts are

available. When costing a scheduling option for a technician that does not have

the required parts, Scheduler includes the cost of shipping the required parts to

the technician or customer site. When the task is assigned to a technician that

does not have the required parts, the parts orders for the technician will

automatically be created.

Schedule Optimization

Scheduler provides an optimization engine to refine technician schedules after

the initial schedule has been created. The optimization engine sees all tasks at

once and reschedules or reassigns tasks to reduce cost in the schedule. The

optimization engine can be run in a batch mode for multiple technicians and

days or interactively in the Dispatch Center for a specific technician’s trip.

Scheduling complex tasks

Scheduler has the capability to handle complex field service tasks that are

frequently encountered when scheduling planned work such as installations,

inspections and preventive maintenance.

When scheduling tasks requiring longer than a standard work shift to complete,

Scheduler automatically breaks these tasks into smaller tasks that fit into the

technicians shift.

Scheduler provides functionality for handling tasks that require customer

confirmation before the technician can be sent to the site. To prevent wasted

trips, tasks without customer confirmation are not released to the field

technician.


Scheduler also recognizes Customer Access Hours and schedules around those

periods when the customer site is not accessible.

Task Dependencies can be created and viewed in the Dispatch Center but are

not currently considered by the Scheduler.

AN OVERVIEW OF HOW SCHEDULER WORKS

This section presents an overview of the process used by Scheduler to create or

recommend the technician assignment and schedule. Scheduler and Spares

Management integration is presented later in the white paper.

As seen below in Chart 1, Scheduler uses a seven-step process to assign and

schedule the task to a technician.

Each step is covered in additional detail in the balance of this section. Parts

availability and cost impacts on the scheduling process are covered in a later

section: Scheduler and Spares Management integration.

Step 1: Select tasks to be assigned and scheduled

Scheduler works in two modes: Interactive or manual and Autonomous or

automated. In the Interactive mode, tasks can be selected from the Task List in

the Dispatch Center. The Task List is created using a seeded or custom query

that can be saved and reused.

2 4

5 6

1

Select the best

optionCost the options

Identif y assignment

and scheduling

options

Find technicians

eligible for

the tasks

Select tasks to b e

assigned and

schedu led

3

Qualif y the eligible

technicians for

Skil ls

Chart 1 The Scheduling Process

7

Optimize the

schedule


Autonomous Scheduler uses a concurrent program that will automatically select

the tasks to be scheduled based a parameter or through a profile called CSR:

Selection of tasks for Autonomous Scheduler.

Step 2: Find technicians eligible for the task

Territories, Installed Base and Service Contracts are used to determine the

technicians that can be assigned to each task selected in Step 1.

Chart 2 as shown below describes how to find eligible technicians.

Eligible technicians can be defined using any or all combination of Territories,

Installed Base and Service Contracts. But if a combination is used that involves

Territories and either Installed Base or Contracts, or both, then the resources in

IB or Contracts must also be in Territories.

Step 3: Qualify the eligible technicians

AllTechnicians

EligibleTechnicians

Preferred resources defined in service contracts applicable to the Service

Request are eligible when also be in the territory when territories are being

used.

Service Contracts

Preferred resources from the Installed Base matching to the Serial or Tag on

the Service Request are eligible when also in the territory when territories are

being used.

Installed Base

A technician in the territory with geography matching to the Incident Address

on the Service Request is eligible. Territories can also be defined in non-

geographical terms. For example, a territory based on product or customer..

Territories

Eligible Technicians

Chart 2 Finding technicians eligible for the task


Eligible technicians are qualified based on skills required for the selected tasks

and skills assigned to the technicians. For tasks, skills can be assigned either

directly to the task or pre-assigned to the task template used to create the task.

In interactive scheduling, the options presented to the dispatcher will only

include qualified technicians; however, the dispatcher can assign a task to a

non-qualified technician by overriding the skills requirement.

In autonomous scheduling, the task will only be assigned to a qualified

technician. When a qualified technician is not found, Scheduler will not assign

or schedule the task.

The tasks to be scheduled and technicians eligible and qualified to work on those

tasks have now been defined

Step 4: Identify assignment and scheduling options

Scheduler will determine all scheduling options within the defined constraints. A

scheduling option is defined as an insertion opportunity for the new task between

or after existing tasks currently scheduled.

The insertion opportunities must fall within the Plan Window as defined by the

planned start and end date and times for the new task in the service request. A

Profile called “CSR: Enforce Plan Window for Scheduler Plan Options” is used to

determine whether the task must “start and end” within the Plan Window or just

“start” within the Plan Window.

Tasks that have not been released to a technician can be rescheduled out if

necessary to make room for the new task being scheduled. However, the

reschedule of an existing task to make room for a new task is constrained by the

planned start and end date and time for the existing task as defined above.

In the example shown below in Chart 4, there are five options between the planned start and end date and time for the new task being scheduled. Each option is

Eligible

Technicians

Skills required for the selected tasks

Qualified

Technicians

HavetheSkills

Chart 3 Qualify the eligible technicians for skills


defined by the interval between two tasks when that interval is inside of the planned start and end date and time.

Other scheduling constraints considered by Scheduler but not shown in Chart 4 are customer access hours, customer commitments, technician availability and parts availability.

For example, Option 2, which would involve an insertion between the currently

scheduled Tasks 3 and 4, assumes that Task 4 can be moved out enough to

make room for the new task without violating the planned start and end time

constraint for Task 4.

The scheduling options are also constrained by parts availability. This impact

will be covered in detail in a later section of the white paper.

Step 5: Cost the options

With the scheduling options defined, the cost for each option is calculated.

The cost of each schedule option is the cost of inserting that new task in the

technician’s trip. The cost of the schedule option equals the cost of the new trip

with the new task inserted minus the cost of the old trip without the new task.

The trip for the technician is defined as the scheduled tasks over the

technician’s shift. For example, going back to Chart 5, the trip for Technician

1, Option 1, would include Task1, Task2, New Task, Task3 and Task4.

Tech 1

Tech 2

Shift

Task 1 Task 4Task 3

Task 5 Task 7

Planned

Start

Option 3

Option 4 Option 5

New Task Options are insertion

opportunities

Task 8

Task 2

Task 6

Planned

End

Chart 4 Define Assignment and Scheduling Options

Option 1 Option 2


The costs considered by Scheduler are as follows:

• Cost per day for the days between received and scheduled

• Cost of travel distance

• Cost of travel time

• Cost of working overtime

• Cost of arriving at the site too early

• Cost of arriving at the site too late

• Cost of not assigning preferred resources

• Cost per day the parent task takes to execute over the minimum required

• Cost for each additional task created over the minimum required

This step is also impacted by Spares Management integration and will be

covered in a later section of the white paper.

Step 6: Select the best option

Autonomous Scheduler will automatically pick the option with the lowest total

trip cost and assign and schedule the task to the technician. With Interactive

Scheduler the dispatcher can view the options and costs and select the best

option.

After the best option is selected either in interactive or autonomous mode, the

task will be in “Planned” status. In “Planned” status the task has been assigned

to the technician and scheduled but not yet released to the technician.

Interactive scheduling has three methods: Assisted, Intelligent and Window-to-

Promise.

Assisted presents a costed list of options based on the criteria used to define

qualified technicians as described above. The travel time in Assisted always

defaults to “as the crow flies” when the Time Distance Server is enabled.

Intelligent is equivalent to Assisted with the inclusion of parts availability and

street level routing.

Window to Promise provides a list of time slots with available technician(s)

based on pre-defined periods, for example, morning or afternoon. Once the

time slot is selected, scheduler, using the Intelligent method, will select the

lowest cost technician available in the slot. The Planned Start and Planned End

times will be updated to reflect the time slot selected.


In Figure 1, as shown below, the Options have been defined and the costs have

been calculated. The dispatcher, operating in Interactive mode, can select the

technician and schedule.

This step is also impacted by Spares Management integration and will be

covered in a later section of the white paper.

Step 7: Optimize the schedule

After the tasks have been initially assigned and scheduled using the basic

scheduling engine, Scheduler has additional functionality to fully optimize the

technician schedules. This optimization module works on two levels: optimize

the technician’s individual trip and optimize multiple technician trips together.

Optimizing the technician’s trip will provide a task sequence that fully

optimizes the technician’s schedule for a single trip. The trip for a technician is

defined as the scheduled tasks over a single shift. This optimized trip will

provide the task sequence that results in the lowest cost for the trip while

satisfying all constraints applicable to the trip.

Opportunities for further cost reduction are almost always found when tasks

are selectively moved between technicians. This level of optimization achieves

the lowest possible cost across multiple technicians while satisfying all

constraints for all technicians and tasks.

Figure 1 Field Service Schedule Task UI


INTRODUCTION TO SPARES MANAGEMENT

Spares Management is positioned in the Field Service solution as a product

providing both logistics and inventory planning functionality to manage a service

parts inventory. The product uses core ERP foundation functionality from Oracle

Inventory, Order Management, Purchasing and ATP extending those products

where necessary with additional functionality to satisfy field service needs. The

product has extensive integration with Oracle Field Service including the Dispatch

Center, Scheduler, Field Service Debrief and Mobile Field Service products.

Spares Management is a complete solution covering key processes and functionality required to manage the Field Service supply chain. The solution covers both Logistics and Planning for service parts.

Key functionality covered by Spares Management includes:

• Integration with Advanced Scheduler

• Plan and replenish warehouse inventories

• Plan and replenish technician inventories

• Parts search and sourcing

• Process orders for the field technician

• Inventory tracking and transactions

• Manage excess and defective parts

• Execute repair for warehouse replenishment

Release 12.0 introduces significant new functionality to plan warehouse inventories and execute external repair for warehouse replenishment.

Integration with Advance Scheduler

Using parts availability and delivery cost from Spares Management, Scheduler

assigns the task and creates the technician schedule using parts availability as a

constraint. Scheduler will not create or recommend a schedule until parts are

available. The dispatcher could, however, relax or remove the constraint if

necessary to assign and schedule the task interactively.

An internal order will be automatically created when the task is assigned to a

technician without the required parts on-hand. A reservation will be

automatically created when the task is assigned to a technician with the parts

on-hand.

The user can define parts required for a task in the Parts Requirement user

interface. Parts required for a task can also be pre-defined in Task Parts for a

task template and product combination. When the parts required have been

pre-defined in Task Parts, the actual Parts Requirement will be automatically


created from the Service Request when the task is created from a template that

has parts required pre-defined in Task Parts for the template and the product

being serviced on the Service Request.

Inventory Planning

Service level agreements often require parts to be stocked in many locations close

to where the service is required. The stocking levels also need to be updated

frequently to reflect the latest usage trends and supersession activity.

Spares Management has functionality to automate inventory planning and

replenishment for both the field service technicians and warehouses.

Logistics

Fast and efficient delivery of parts to the field technician is a mission critical

objective for the field service operation. Spares Management logistics functionality

includes: tracking usable and defective parts, parts orders for the technician and

excess and defective returns.

Sourcing

Spares Management also provides functionality to quickly locate available parts in a

complex field service supply chain with numerous stocking locations. This

functionality has been integrated into the Mobile Field Service product enabling the

technician to do local parts searches.

SCHEDULER AND SPARES MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION

An overview of Scheduler without reference to any of the parts availability

considerations that effect technician scheduling was presented above. This

section will cover Scheduler and Spares Management integration and how that

integration impacts that scheduling process previously described.


The scheduling process was introduced earlier in the white paper as a seven

step process. As shown below in Chart 5, it’s now a eight-step process with

the inclusion of Step 7: Create the reservation or parts order.

The process Steps impacted by Scheduler and Spares Management integration

are Steps 4 through 8 and are highlighted in the chart shown above.

Chart 6, as seen below, shows an overview of Scheduler and Spares

Management integration along with the Scheduler steps that are impacted.

The integration can be described as a series of interactions between the two

modules. The Parts Requirement for the task is created in Spares Management

and passed to Scheduler. The presence of a Parts Requirement for the task

activates the integration process causing scheduler to request parts availability

and cost information for the technicians qualified for the task assignment. The

cost represents the logistics cost of delivery of the required part(s) to the

2 4

5 6

1

Select the best

option

Cost the feasib le

options

Identif y assignment

and scheduling

options

Find technicians

eligible for

the tasks

Select tasks to b e

assigned and

schedu led

3

Qualif y the eligible

technicians for

Skil ls

Chart 5 The Scheduling Process with Spares Integration

7

Create the reservation

or parts ord er

8

Optimize the

Schedule

Spares

ManagementScheduler

Chart 6 Overview of Scheduler and Spares Management Integration

Impacts Step 4

Parts required for the task

Impacts Step 4

Impacts Step 4

Qualified technician s for the task

Parts availab ilit y and cost for the technician s

Impacts Step 5 and 6

Technicians select ed for the task

Impacts Step 7

Reservations and/or internal orders


technician in the case where the technician does not have them on-hand and

available. The parts availability is expressed in terms of a delivery date and

time.

With parts availability and cost information, Scheduler will eliminate

infeasible scheduling options based on parts availability. The cost of

parts delivery will also be added to the Scheduler trip cost calculations.

When the technician has been selected for the task, Spares Management will

either create the reservation in the case where the technician has the parts on-

hand or create the internal order when the technician doesn’t have the parts on-

hand.

The balance of this section will present the Spares Management integration

impact on the Scheduler process for each of the individual steps starting with

Step 4.

How does the integration impact Step 4 of the scheduling process:

Identify assignment and scheduling options?

The Spares Management integration acts as a constraint on the scheduling

process by eliminating infeasible scheduling options based on parts availability. With Spares Management integration, Scheduler will not create or

recommend a technician schedule until the parts are available.

To illustrate the concept of parts availability acting as a constraint, take a look at

Chart 7 as shown below. Operating in either Autonomous or Interactive

Intelligent mode, Scheduler will not recommend a technician assignment or

create a schedule until the parts are available. In this case, assuming neither

technician has the parts available, Options 4 and 5 for Tech 2 will not be

considered as feasible by Scheduler since the parts are not scheduled to arrive

until after the Options 4 and 5 are scheduled to start.

Tech 1 Task 1 Task 4Task 3

Planned

Start

Option 3

Option 4 Option 5

New Task Options are insertion

opportunities

Task 2

Planned

End

Chart 7 Define Assignment and Scheduling Options

Option 1 Option 2


Let’s take a look at the details. How does the integration between the two

modules work to define scheduling constraints and eliminate infeasible

scheduling options?

Define parts required for the task

The process starts with the Parts Requirement which is used to define the parts

required for a task. The Parts Requirement can be created in two different

ways in Spares Management:

• Parts required for the task can be defined in the Parts Requirement UI.

• Parts Requirements can be pre-defined for a product and task template in

the Task Parts UI.

In addition to the Parts Requirement UI, the Parts Requirement can also be

created in Mobile Field Service and the Field Service Technician Portal. The

Mobile Field Service process will not be covered in this White Paper.

When the parts required have been pre-defined in Task Parts, the Parts

Requirement will be automatically created from the Service Request when the

task is created from a template that has parts required pre-defined for the

template and the product being serviced on the Service Request.

Break/fix, preventative maintenance, installations and Knowledge Management

are all processes that could potentially utilize Task Parts to automatically create

the Parts Requirement in the Service Request


Creating the Parts Requirement in the Parts Requirement UI

As shown below in Figure 2, the Parts Requirement UI is used to create a parts

requirement for a task.

In the example shown above, two parts are required for Task 45804 and the

Requirement Number is 10327.

The follow-up task, where parts are needed, is a common scenario where a

Parts Requirement would be created manually. The dispatcher (or technician

using Mobile Field Service) can then use Scheduler to find a technician who has

the parts currently available or re-schedule the original technician when parts

have been delivered.

Pre-define the parts required in the Task Parts UI

Parts required for a task can also be pre-defined in Spares Management Task

Parts for a Product and Task Template.

Figure 3 Spares Management Task Parts

Figure 2 Define Parts Requirement for a task


In the example above in Figure 3, three parts are required when the Task

“Replace Unit FS89108” is created from the Task Template for Product

AS54888. In this example the parts were defined manually; however, the parts

can also be defined automatically from a history of Field Service debrief

transactions using a concurrent program called “Create Task Parts History”.

When the parts have been defined both automatically with the concurrent

program and manually, the manual entries will be used when creating the Parts

Requirement

When parts have been pre-defined in Task Parts, the Parts Requirement

will be automatically created from the Service Request and Task when

the product on the Service Request and the Task Template used to

create the task have parts pre-defined in Task Parts.

A business scenario where parts could be pre-defined for a product and task

template would be preventative maintenance, overhaul or installation work. In

these scenarios the work description and parts required are typically known in

advance.

The parts required for break/fix tasks can also pre-defined in Task Parts when

those tasks are executed frequently enough that the parts required can be

defined in advance with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Request Parts Availability and Cost

When a Parts Requirement has been defined for a task, this will activate

Scheduler to request parts availability information from Spares Management for


the technicians eligible and qualified for the task. In the request Scheduler

provides:

• Task that has the Parts Requirement

• Qualified technicians eligible for the task assignment

• Parts Priority or All Parts.

Qualified technicians are defined in Scheduler with Territories, Contracts,

Installed Base and Skills. This definition was described earlier in the white

paper.

What is a Parts Priority?

The Parts Priority is defined in Spares Management and is used to group parts

based on the likelihood, expressed as a percent, of the part being used on the

task. It’s the “Percent” field in Task Parts, shown above in Figure3 or the

“Likelihood” field of the Parts Requirement, shown above in Figure 2.

In the example shown above in Figure 4 there are three Priorities: P1 with a

likelihood between 76% and 100%, P2 with a likelihood between 26% and 75%

and P3 with a likelihood between 0% and 25%.

The Parts Priority makes it easy for the dispatcher to change the parts required

in Scheduler. In autonomous Scheduler the Parts Priority comes from the

Profile CSF: Default Spares Availability. But working interactively in Scheduler,

the dispatcher can relax or tighten the parts requirement constraint by changing

the Priority in the Schedule Task UI. The dispatcher could, for example, relax

the parts constraint on the task by changing the parts required from All Parts to

only High Priority parts.

Figure 4 Spares Management Parts Priorities


As shown above in Figure 5, the dispatcher, using the Preferences tab, can

control the parts considered by Scheduler by selecting the Parts Priority from

the Spares Availability Condition.

Provide the Delivery Date and Time and Cost for each delivery option

Based on the request from Scheduler as described above, Spares Management

will provide to Scheduler the following:

• Delivery date and time and Cost

• For each delivery option

• For each qualified technician

An individual technician may have multiple delivery options depending on

inventory availability, sourcing and Shipment Methods.

In the example shown below in Chart 8, five delivery options for two

technicians qualified for the task have been identified. The multiple delivery

options for each technician are defined by multiple Shipment Methods.

However, Spares Management will filter out those Parts Delivery Options that

are later in time and higher in cost. So in this example, only options 1, 4 and 5

would be passed back to Scheduler.

Figure 5 Field Service Dispatch Center Task List


Chart 8 Parts Delivery Options and Cost

Delivery Option

Task Technician Source Method of Shipment

Delivery Date/Time

Cost

1 1267 Technician 1 Technician Stock

None 10-Jun-2007 Now

0

2 1267 Technician 1 Central Warehouse

Next Day Air 11-Jun-2007 10:30

125


Truck 15-Jun-2007 17:00

50


Next Day Air 11-Jun-2007 14:00

125


Truck 15-Jun-2007 17:00

50

The Cost impact on Step 5 will be covered in the next section on Cost the

Options. Let’s take a closer look at Delivery Date and Time.

How is Delivery Date and Time Determined?

The supply chain is used to determine inventory availability beyond the

technician and can be defined in a Profile as either based on Available to

Promise or Sourcing in Oracle Inventory.

Available to Promise or ATP is a module in Advanced Supply Chain Planning

or ASCP that’s used to search for inventory in the supply chain. ATP uses

Sourcing Rules and Assignment Sets to define the supply chain.

On the other hand, Sourcing in Oracle Inventory is the functionality used to

determine the Supplier for the Item in the organization, Organization or Sub-

inventory.

Another Spares Management profile called CSP: Include Alternates is used to

determine whether supersession and substitute parts will be included in the

availability profile provided to Scheduler. If the profile is set to include

alternates, the alternates will be included in the Spares response only if primary

part(s) is not available.

Another profile called CSP: Include Car stock is used to determine whether the

technicians inventory will be considered. If the technician has parts available,

the Cost is 0 and Delivery Date/Time is current date and time. If the

technician does not have part(s) available, Spares provides Delivery Date and


Time and Cost for each delivery option based on Intransit Time for the Shipment

Method. When multiple parts are involved, Spares provides the latest date and

time and a summary of cost for all parts.

Intransit Time, expressed in days, comes from Oracle Inventory Shipping

Networks and Shipment Methods. An Intransit Time is entered for the

Shipment Method as defined for a Shipping Network. See Figure 7 for

Shipping Networks and Figure 8 for Shipment Methods and Intransit Times.

Figure 7 Oracle Inventory Shipping Networks

Figure 8 Shipment Methods and Intransit Time


In the example shown above in Figure 8 there are four Shipment Methods

defined for shipping between Dallas and the Field Technicians. For example,

when the Shipping Method UPS is used, the Intransit Time is 3 days.

But in Field Service it’s not enough to know which day the shipment is

scheduled to arrive. It’s also necessary to know the delivery time so the

technician can potentially be scheduled within the same day the parts

delivery arrives.

Spares Management extends the functionality by providing a Delivery Time for

each Shipment Method. See Figure 6 as shown below for Delivery Times.

For example as shown above in Figure 6, if the Delivery Date for the Shipping

Method Federal Express was 11-Jun-2007 based on Intransit Time, then

Delivery Times in Spares Management will be used to further refine the delivery

to 11-Jun-2007 at 1030 hrs.

The functionality also includes a buffer time, called a “Comfort Zone”, between

the Delivery Date and Time and the earliest scheduled start for the task. The

Comfort Zone, expressed in hours, is configurable for each Method of

Shipment.

If the Comfort Zone in the above example were 1 hour, then the Delivery Date

and Time provided to Scheduler by Spares Management would be 1130 hours.

In Summary for the impact on Step 4

The technician will not be recommended for a schedule until the parts required

for the task are available. The availability of parts required for the task in effect

acts as a constraint on the scheduling process. Infeasible scheduling options

are eliminated based on Delivery Date and Time for the parts required for the

task.

Figure 6 Spares Management Delivery Times


Let’s take a closer look at Step 5 where the scheduling costs can now include

the cost of any parts delivery.


Cost the feasible options?

In the previous step, shown in Chart 8, Spares Management has sent to

Scheduler the cost for each delivery option and the infeasible options have been

eliminated based on delivery date and time. Scheduler can now calculate the

Trip Cost for each feasible scheduling option and include the parts cost.

Chart 9 Cost the Options

Scheduling Costs Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Cost per day the task was scheduled after the day it was received

0 0 0

Cost of travel distance 10 15 5

Cost of a resource working overtime 25 35 15

Cost of a resource working overtime 25 25 25

Cost of arriving too early 0 0 0

Cost of arriving too late 0 0 0

Cost of not assigning preferred resources

0 0 0

Cost per day the parent takes longer to execute than absolutely required

0 0 0

Cost for each additional task created more than absolutely required

0 0 0

Parts Cost 0 125 50

Total Trip Cost Including Parts 60 200 95

Referring above to Chart 9, the total cost for each option is calculated and the

total cost now includes the Parts Cost. The Parts Cost is the cost of any parts

delivery for the scheduling option being considered. The total cost for each

option is the Trip Cost for that technician when the new task is inserted into a

potential scheduling position in the trip. The trip for the technician is defined

as the scheduled tasks, including the new task, over the technician’s shift.

How are Costs Determined?


Costs are defined in Oracle Inventory Shipping Networks for each Delivery

Option. See Chart 8 and Figure 7 for Shipping Networks and Figure 8 for

Shipping Methods and Costs. Figures 7 and 8 are shown above in the previous

section.


Select the Best Option

In Steps 4 and 5, described above, the Delivery Date and Time and Cost was

provided to Scheduler. The infeasible scheduling options were eliminated in

Step 4 and the feasible scheduling options were costed in Step 5.

In Autonomous Scheduler the technician will be selected and the task

scheduled based on the lowest cost option. With Scheduler and Spares

Management integration the costs now include the “parts cost” as shown above

in Chart 9.

With Interactive Intelligent scheduling mode, where the dispatcher views the

scheduling options and selects the best one, the “parts cost” are not included in

the total cost but are shown separately for each of the scheduling options as

“Spares Cost”. This is shown below in Figure 9.

As shown above in Figure 9, the Spares delivery date and time along with the

cost are now visible in the Advice tab of Scheduler. Stanley, for example will

not have the parts available until 3-Jan-2008 at a cost of $125.00 while Emery

has the parts currently on-hand and available.

Figure 9 Field Service Dispatch Advice Tab



Create the reservation and internal orders

As shown in the previous step the technician and schedule will be selected

either in Autonomous or Interactive mode. When the task with a Parts

Requirement is assigned to a technician, Spares Management will automatically

create a reservation if parts are available in the technician sub-inventory or an

internal order if parts are not available.

When multiple parts and quantities are involved in the Parts Requirement, a

Profile called CSP: Ship Complete is used to determine whether partial

shipments are allowed on the internal order. When this profile is set to “Yes”,

the internal order will be created with a “Ship Set” which will prevent partial

shipments.

.

As shown above in Figure 10, the Source tab of the Parts Requirement has

been updated with the reservation. In this case the assigned technician had

both parts on-hand. In the case where the assigned technician did not have the

parts on-hand, an internal order would be created.

Figure 10 Parts Requirement Source Tab


As shown below in Figure 11, the Spares tab in the Dispatch Center has also

been updated with the reservation in this case or the internal order in the case

where the technician does not have the parts.


Optimize the schedule

The Optimizer used in Step 8 will not reassign or reschedule an existing task

that has either a reservation or internal order based on the existing technician

schedule.

From a Spares Management integration perspective the Optimizer will not

reassign or reschedule any task that has a parts availability constraint imposed.

The optimization engine can be run in a batch mode for multiple technicians

and days or interactively in the Dispatch Center for a specific technician’s trip.

Optimization across Trips is often run at the beginning of the day to fully

optimize the field service schedule going into the day.

Figure 11 Field Service Dispatch Center Spares Tab


Oracle Advanced Scheduler 12.0

Scheduler and Spares Management Integration

September 2007

Author: John Moore

650.607.2694

[email protected]

Oracle Corporation

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