Designing a Repair Plan
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Complete Equipment Inventory
Before you can design a repair plan it is critical to confirm the exact quantity of POS scanners, receipt printers, barcode printers, RF terminals and other peripheral devices in use across all your locations. This should be documented by manufacturer and model number with serial numbers and warranty expiry dates. Once this is in place you have taken the first step to establishing a successful maintenance programme.
Many times, this data is not thought of until equipment is not working. If you can quickly provide your service vendor with the make (manufacturer) and model number of the equipment that needs repair it can speed up the time it takes to get a quote, an RMA, or a unit to swap out.
If you track your failure rates by product type this will also assist you in finding the right service option to best fit your needs.
Determining Current Sparing Levels
Once you have confirmed all of the stock you have and the number of different manufacturers this represents you should find out if you have any spare units that you can use if a unit fails or gets damaged.
This information will also help you evaluate the level of service or type of repair programme you need. Many organisations have purchased extra unit(s) working with a refurbished equipment vendor in order to save on the expense of the holding spare units to use while a broken unit is being repaired.
Location Logistics
Another key element to determining the best repair service for your business is to consider where all of the equipment is located. Is it all at a single location or do you have it distributed among multiple storefronts or warehouses? How are these sites managed, individually or centrally controlled?
The determination of what type of repair service to seek out is greatly influenced by the answers to these questions. If your equipment is dispersed among several sites it might be advantageous to allow each site to handle repairs on an as needed or one-by-one basis. On the other hand, it might make more financial sense to group all of your equipment together on one service contract. Factors that will help you make that decision include:
- How close (geographically and operationally) is each facility to the others?
- Is the budget for each location unique or part of a larger functional budget?
- How unique from each other is the equipment at each location?
- Are there any spare units and if so, is there any possibility of sharing if a unit fails?
- Do invoices for the repair work come to a central office or to each store or location?
If you do have multiple locations for which you are responsible, it can make sense to have your service provider assist you with managing your inventories and repair needs across the multiple locations. Some service providers have processes and specific offerings to address this need.
Determining Business Requirements
The next step is to realise how important this equipment is for the day-to-day operation of your business. Companies use a variety of POS & barcode equipment, and it falls into a variety of categories, such as:
- Mission Critical –must operate 24/7
- Critical – cannot be ‘down’ more than a few hours
- Optimal– cannot be ‘down’ more than a few days
- Not critical –can operate without this equipment for 1-2 weeks or more
Determining what your priorities are for each piece of hardware will help when selecting the appropriate maintenance programme.
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