Field Service Management Glossary

Field service management is the practice and theory of managing on-premise work, including personnel, equipment, service, and work operations

Material ordering is the process of ordering materials to a warehouse or storage location.

A bill of materials is a detailed inventory of raw materials, parts, and instructions required to build, manufacture, or repair a product or service.

A service-level agreement is a document outlining the relationship between a service provider and a client. SLAs are usually broken up into sections like deliverables, quality, availability, responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations in order to create a clear, and transparent agreement between the two parties.

Supply chain consists of the entire production to distribution process. When it comes to FSM, a field technician needs to know that things are in the right place, at the right time in order to be productive. From materials, bookings and task briefs and equipment, everything needs to align properly. 

First Time Fix Rate (FTFR) is the percentage of time spent by a technician to fix an issue or task the first time they engage with it. It’s apreframnce metric for mobile services providers. 

Predictive Maintenance is the method of leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things IoT technologies to detect and address flaws and possible defects in equipment before they turn into full-blown problems. It’s a proactive field service management practice that aims to safeguard operational workflow and equipment life-span.

Real-time data refers to the access in information without any delay. In a field service management context, immediate access to data can help with faster, more informed decisions, better scheduling and more efficient technician performance.

Route optimization is the practice of finding the fastest, most efficient driving route while taking into consideration factors such as traffic, time-slots, adjustments, new information, and deadlines. 

Computerized maintenance management system, also known as computerized maintenance management information system, is a software package that maintains a computer database of information about an organization’s maintenance operations.

Mean time between failures (MTBF) is the average time between system/machinery breakdowns.