Analysis of First-Time Completion in the Field Service Environment

First-time completion is an important measure of service quality and efficiency in the field service industry. Customers call upon field service providers to repair their equipment in a timely manner so it can be put back into service for their business demands. Responsiveness can be measured through first-time completion and is defined as completing the repair on the first visit of a service call. This research is exploring the first-time completion in the forklift service industry. This research found the primary factors that impact first-time completion percentage in this industry include parts on hand, parts backorder process, technician experience, and anticipating service demands

Scalable and responsive information for industrial maintenance work : developing XR support on smart glasses for maintenance technicians

This paper describes the process and results of bringing responsive and scalable technical documentation to smart glasses to support industrial maintenance. Development and testing was done in four development cycles to discover how maintenance information can be delivered to smart glasses to support maintenance technicians. Test case was elevator maintenance, and several user tests were performed in a real or realistic environment by real maintenance experts. The concept of using smart glasses to view technical information during a maintenance task was received very well by the test users. This study confirms that DITA XML is a good candidate for the creation of technical information content for smart glasses, but information design is needed to ensure the scalability and usability of the information.acceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Human‑centred design in industry 4.0: case study review and opportunities for future research

The transition to industry 4.0 has impacted factories, but it also afects the entire value chain. In this sense, human-centred factors play a core role in transitioning to sustainable manufacturing processes and consumption. The awareness of human roles in Industry 4.0 is increasing, as evidenced by active work in developing methods, exploring infuencing factors, and proving the efectiveness of design oriented to humans. However, numerous studies have been brought into existence but then disconnected from other studies. As a consequence, these studies in industry and research alike are not regularly adopted, and the network of studies is seemingly broad and expands without forming a coherent structure. This study is a unique attempt to bridge the gap through the literature characteristics and lessons learnt derived from a collection of case studies regarding human-centred design (HCD) in the context of Industry 4.0. This objective is achieved by a well-rounded systematic literature review whose special unit of analysis is given to the case studies, delivering contributions in three ways: (1) providing an insight into how the literature has evolved through the cross-disciplinary lens; (2) identifying what research themes associated with design methods are emerging in the feld; (3) and setting the research agenda in the context of HCD in Industry 4.0, taking into account the lessons learnt, as uncovered by the in-depth review of case studies

Instructions on Small Screens : Analysing the Multimodality of Technical Communication Through a Design Experiment

Tässä tutkielmassa analysoin teknisen viestinnän multimodaalisuutta kokeellisen suunnittelun avulla. Kokeessani suunnittelen ja konvertoin älylasien pienelle näytölle kolme lyhyttä KONE Oyj:n asennus- ja huolto-ohjetta. Vaikka käytän kokeessani älylaseja, tutkimuksen näyttö voisi periaatteessa olla mikä tahansa pieni näyttö, esimerkiksi älypuhelin tai älykello, jonka ajantasainen sisältö on teoriassa helpommin kuljetettavissa mukana kuin paperille tulostettu perinteinen PDF-ohje. Konvertoin ohjeet käyttäen kahta teoriaa: visuaaliset ohjeet (Gattullo et al. 2019) ja minimalismiheuristiikka (van der Meij ja Carroll, 1998). Ymmärtääkseni paremmin ohjeiden koko käyttökontekstia, rakennan konversioiden testaamiseen yhteistyönä KONE Oyj:ssä käyttäjätestiympäristön simuloimaan ammattimaista hissin asennus- ja huoltoympäristöä. Vaikka nykytekniikka mahdollistaa digitaalisten, pienten näyttöjen käytön, ohjeiden tarkoitus ei muutu: niiden pitää ymmärrettävästi auttaa lukijaa suorittamaan tehtävänsä. Täten konversio- ja suunnitteluteorioiden vastapainoksi multimodaalisuuden teoriat (esimerkiksi, Bateman, Wildfeuer ja Hiippala, 2017) auttavat analysoimaan konversioiden ymmärrettävyyden eroja systemaattisesti. Käytän tutkielmassani multimodaalisuuden teorioita ymmärtääkseni konversioiden vaikutukset ohjeiden ymmärrettävyyteen. Multimodaalisuuden teorioiden avulla tunnistan ohjeiden käyttötilanteen, käytetyn median (älylasit) ominaisuudet, sekä rajaan varsinaiseksi tutkimuskohteekseni konvertoiduilta ohjenäytöiltä tunnistamani semioottiset moodit ja niiden vaikutukset konvertoitujen ohjeiden ymmärtämiseen. Johtopäätöksinä esitän, ettei yksittäisiä konvertoituja ohjenäyttöjä tutkimalla synny mimimalismiheuristiikan osalta ymmärrettävyyden kannalta merkittäviä eroja lähtötilanteen PDF-ohjeeseen nähden, lukuun ottamatta muutamien helposti pääteltävien kohtien poisjättämistä. Yleisesti ottaen molemmissa konversioissa älylaseille siirtyy multimodaalisesti samankaltainen, kaksiulotteista sivunäkymää hyödyntävä ohje kuin lähtötilanteen PDF. Koska toinen tutkimani teoria, visuaaliset ohjeet, perustuvat verbien korvaamiseen symboleilla, symbolien ymmärrettävyys korostuu merkittävänä erona visuaalisten ohjeiden käytettävyydessä. Johtopäätöksiä selventää, etten hyödynnä älylasien kaikkia ilmaisukeinoja, kuten liikkuvaa kuvaa ja ääntä, koska kokeessani huomioin kustannustehokkaan, teollisten ohjeiden tuotantoprosessin. Lopuksi ehdotan erityisesti teknisen viestinnän viitekehyksessä jatkotutkimuksen aiheiksi uusien digitaalisten medioiden kaikkien ominaisuuksien ja niiden multimodaalisten käyttötilanteiden tutkimista ja hyödyntämistä, pienien näyttöjen sisällöntuotannon standardisoinnin tutkimista ja kehitystä, sekä symbolien ymmärrettävyyden tutkimista

The Benefits of Extended Reality for Technical Communication : Utilizing XR for Maintenance Documentation Creation and Delivery

The main goal of this dissertation is to explore the benefits of extended reality for technical communication. Both of these fields offer opportunities and also pose challenges to each other, and this dissertation provides insight into this relationship. The research was initiated by the author’s personal interest in both fields and also human-technology interaction and user needs in general. Even though this is an academic dissertation, it is first and foremost a practitioner’s view of these evolving technologies and their potential uses in industry and, specifically, in industrial maintenance and technical communication. Under the umbrella of extended reality and technical communication, this dissertation focuses on two main themes. The first part studies virtual reality as a technology to facilitate collaboration and digital content creation for technical documentation in industrial companies, and the second part explores the possibilities of augmented reality and smart glasses as a delivery channel for maintenance instructions. The developed concepts were tested by domain experts in user tests. The overall results of testing were positive, and domain experts expressed enthusiasm toward the concepts and technologies in general. The technical documentation process is an inherently collaborative process involving stakeholders from different teams and organizations, and virtual reality was evaluated to have a positive effect on that process, especially in the case of globally scattered teams. The developed tools were also rated positively for digital content creation. Therefore, virtual reality offers many benefits for technical documentation creation, an area where it has not been utilized until now. On the augmented reality side, domain experts were generally enthusiastic about the use of smart glasses even though the technologies are not yet mature enough for field use in industrial maintenance. Furthermore, the results show that content created in the technical communications industry standard, DITA XML, works well when delivered to smart glasses, and the same content can be single sourced to other delivery channels. The use of DITA XML, therefore, eliminates the need to tailor content for each delivery channel separately, and offers an effective way to create and update content for AR applications in industrial companies. This, in turn, can advance the use of AR technologies and related devices in field operations in industrial companies. In conclusion, the findings of this dissertation show that the fields of technical communication and extended reality have a significant amount of synergy. In this dissertation I establish use cases and guidelines for these areas