Service organizations

Storage areas for maintenance, janitorial, and other service organizations must be provided. Safety items such as fire extinguishers, firehose cabinets, safety hoops on permanent ladders, guard rads, shielding for acid pumps, clearance for electric panel boards, etc, are needed. Manholes and cleanouts for sewer pipes within the facility as well as in the landscape and parking areas should be provided. 

Customer Complaints. A failure in a company s quaUty system often shows up in the form of a customer complaint. These reports of nonconformances, whether for product or service deficiencies, are typically received by the sales or customer service organization and then channeled to QA. Quahty assurance often tracks the progress and coordinates the complaint investigation. Once completed, it is QA that reviews the report of the investigation and corrective action for thoroughness and efficacy. QuaUty assurance then either passes the information along to the sales or customer service organization or contacts the customer direcdy. 

Home desalinators are possible only for industrialized countries with a central service organization. They will eventually become available on a rental/service contract basis, as is standard practice for water softeners in many communities. Although rental of water softeners is common in the United States, home membrane-system rental is not estabUshed. 

While you may not service your products, others may well do so and the standard requires that you collect information generated by the servicing organizations and convey it to those who can use it to improve the product and the manufacturing processes. This means that you will need to establish liaison links with servicing organizations and enlist their support in reporting to you any concerns they have about the serviceability or maintainability of the product, the availability of spare parts, and the usability of the manuals and other information you have provided. 

How do you ensure that information from servicing organizations is collected and used to effect improvement ... 

It is to be hoped that the variety of certification schemes will not multiply, or the client is likely to be confused rather than informed. When making his choice he may usefully remember that the criteria of good quality systems are as applicable to service organizations as they are to manufacturers, and that clarity regarding the objectives of the service offered together with practical common sense in providing this service are the real indicators. 

What lessons did we learn from our dealings with service organizations and outside vendors ... 

Commercial Testing Labs. The Commercial Testing Lab is a service organization whose product is its tests. Its profitability is dependent on providing a high quality of service while minimizing its own cost per test. 

Technical journals, 24 347 Technical service, 24 338-351 development process and, 24 348 focus of, 24 339 functions of, 24 341-347 future of, 24 350 objective of, 24 338-339 spectrum of, 24 340-341 technology and, 24 349-350 troubleshooting aspect of, 24 348 Technical service organizations, structure of, 24 344-345 Technical service personnel... 

Additionally, these diversifications may represent sources of distraction for senior management, which can be exacerbated if the companies are publicly traded. A recent example is the diversification of the contract service organization aaiPharma (Wilmington, NC, U.S.A.) into a specialty pharmaceutical manufacturer. Quintiles (Research Triangle Park, NC, U.S.A.) also diversified aggressively in the 1990s and the acquisition of a patient billing company was problematic. 

Structural changes in the group organization and adjustments of administrative functions were also made. For example, each division s software activities were bundled into a software center of competence that acts as an internal supplier to the divisions. This not only allows the company to be faster and more efficient in developing software, but it also provides tremendous benefits to customers as all MED products include software with a common look and feel. Shared service organizations that consolidated functions such as general accounting and payroll were formed as well. 

The team works with the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other service organizations. The team will remain in contact with the victims until their assistance is no longer required. 

Existence of an adequate distribution and customer service organization... 

When both of the above solutions are too much of an investment, we will have to go to in situ testing of the valves, which is also for spring-operated valves sometimes a cumbersome and expensive solution. Different service organizations offer the in situ testing on spring valves. Most are based on the same principle where set pressure is actually calculated based upon an external force applied on the spring (hydraulic or pneumatic). 

E-mail Address Patrick.lavigne nreca.coop Web Address www.nreca.coop The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) is the national service organization dedicated to representing the interests of consumer-owned cooperative electric utilities and the consumers they serve. 

Improving operational performance. Although many customers prefer to have services bundled and to source as many services as possible from a single provider, they have very little tolerance of cross-subsidies between these services. The service organization thus needs to assess each service s performance from a standalone perspective. Customers will certainly do this themselves for those services where markets exist. They will also benchmark natural monopolies, to be able to assert an appropriate level of pressure on the service provider and drive prices down. Service providers, in turn, need to pull operational and structural improvement levers ... 

The rising competitive pressure in the chemical industry, accelerated by the emergence of low-cost suppliers in emerging economies, represents a massive call for further improvement action in the service organizations. 

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