Posted by VSARMIENTO, 6/16/2009 5:55:19 AM

A good part of any QA processes is accomplished by the use of trends and correlations analyses.  Depending on how comprehensive the database used in the maintenance of equipment,  trending can be done monthly, quarterly or at any other periods of choice.

Let say the department is being bogged down by too much service calls received, for any given period, an analysis can be started by correlating this particular 'service type' to let say the 'location' where the calls came from, to the 'type of equipment', to the nature of 'complaint', to the type of 'equipment problem', down  to the 'person that made the 'complaint(s)'.  Weather the problem was later validated to be (real) repair was done, (imaginary), no problem found, an intermittent in nature or if it can be classified as a user related error?  

A good starting point is to collect all Service Calls for a given period. Then break them down by Device or Equipment Types. Focusing on the high number of incidence,  filter them further down by Problem types, then to types of Corrective measure implemented by the technician(s).

Using Pareto's chart as a visual aide for all the trended information, for any particular type of device, one may realized that 90% of the service requests received during that period that needs actual repair or may share the same problems are actually caused only by 10% of that particular equipment population.  

Once a trend is established and identified, a proper service approach, solution(s) to minimize problem re-occurrence can then be planned and implemented.  Once a particular problem is identified, isolated and addressed using this approach, the total workload for the department will be reduced.  It may even come as a surprise to find out how much more work are being added via what we call as "annoyance calls" .