Abstract
The case study outlined in this chapter focuses on eircom, Ireland’s largest provider of telecom services, i.e. fixed line phone, mobile, broadband and data. The majority of eircom’s technology business involves the delivery and repair of copper/fibre telephone services. Within that, eircom’s field force comprises the technicians who install and repair these services. The management of eircom’s field force has many challenges ranging from geography and skill to productivity and service level.
Simulation modelling was adopted as the most accurate approach to address these challenges. This chapter demonstrates how simulation was used to objectively understand the issues, design solutions and quantify eircom’s requirements. CIM Ireland built the models and assisted in the design of the solutions that resulted in a 16% improvement in ‘delivery on time’, combined with a 19% reduction in resources required. The accuracy level of the model’s performance was 97.5% when compared with actual performance.
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Notes
- 1.
Planned work refers to jobs where a customer does not have an immediate requirement. These jobs can therefore be scheduled based on resource availability (e.g. installation work and/or maintenance work).
- 2.
Reactive work refers to jobs where a customer has an immediate requirement. These jobs need to be completed within a contracted time frame (e.g. faults).
- 3.
Exchange—a telephone exchange links the cables from houses/businesses to the phone network. There are over 1,200 eircom exchanges throughout Ireland representing the geographic spread of the workload. This is the lowest level of granularity available to identify the location of jobs in eircom’s network.
- 4.
The board of management makes strategic decisions for the company.
- 5.
The government appointed a regulator who defines the level of services to be achieved and can levy fines if these service levels are not achieved.
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Timon, F., Brennan, A. (2013). Field Force Management at eircom . In: Owusu, G., O’Brien, P., McCall, J., Doherty, N. (eds) Transforming Field and Service Operations. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44970-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-44970-3_11
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