How do high-end medical device companies provide low-cost after-sale service?

Unbearably high maintenance costs?

I once wrote an article exploring the lowDRAfter-sale Service costs. That article mentioned a government procurement project in Guizhou Province, where the winning bid for aDRwas less than25ten thousand yuan. However, according to my calculations, the annual maintenance cost of aDRcould easily exceed20000yuan. In other words, the annual warranty cost of aDRaccounted for8%of the purchase price of the equipment. Although the annual maintenance fee accounting for8%of the total equipment purchase cost is a very common proportion, many hospitals, especially small hospitals, find it difficult to bear.

To save on maintenance costs, many hospitals have opted for third-party maintenance services. Unfortunately, the numerous third-party companies on the market vary greatly in quality. If a hospital encounters a strong and reputable company, it's a win-win situation. However, if they unfortunately encounter a third-party company with average capabilities and limited skills, facing difficult problems that remain unresolved even after several days, it can be very frustrating.

At this point, hospitals naturally think: It would be great if manufacturers could provide high-quality and affordable services. In fact, many high-end manufacturers have been trying to reduce maintenance costs. Today, I will show you what measures these manufacturers have taken to reduce maintenance costs, and which of these measures can be learned from by our domestic small manufacturers and third-party maintenance companies?

High-end companies' first strategy to reduce maintenance costs:

Bundling several years of warranty fees with the machine sale

Since they need to sell the machine, manufacturers are highly motivated to offer customers significant discounts on maintenance fees, which is very beneficial for hospitals. Manufacturers can also increase the size of their maintenance team and spread fixed costs by receiving maintenance fees in advance. This method is good, but unfortunately, it is not often used in government Bidding, because everyone is competing on Price. An extra year of warranty will significantly increase the equipment Price. With a higher Price, regardless of how good other conditions are, it is difficult to win the bid in the current environment.

However, this method is very effective for customers who place great importance on overall operating costs. It is also very meaningful for domestic small manufacturers. In today's highly homogeneous machine market, demonstrating the manufacturer's sincerity and capabilities through After-sale Service is also a good direction. What about third-party maintenance companies? Although third-party maintenance companies do not sell machines, signing multi-year maintenance contracts can also effectively reduce maintenance costs. Those who have done maintenance know that unless it is a new machine that has just come out of warranty, the maintenance cost in the first year is often the highest. Later, as maintenance is carried out, the maintenance cost will gradually decrease. Therefore, as a third-party maintenance company, it is willing to sign a multi-year maintenance contract. At this time, it is natural for the hospital to request a discount for a multi-year contract. This is a win-win situation.

High-end companies' second strategy to reduce maintenance costs:

Decentralizing engineers

That is, placing engineers' bases closer to customers. Nowadays, large medical equipment has become widespread in counties and even towns. Therefore, if engineers travel from provincial capital cities to these locations for maintenance, it will inevitably increase travel costs and time. Therefore, placing engineers in third- and fourth-tier cities closer to customers can effectively save costs. However, this method may be suitable for manufacturers but not for third-party maintenance companies. The reason is that due to their scale, third-party maintenance companies do not have enough maintenance contracts in a single third- or fourth-tier city to support placing resident engineers in that city.

High-end companies' third strategy to save maintenance costs:

Remote maintenance (also known as remote diagnosis or digital maintenance)

The basic principle of this remote maintenance is to monitor the equipment's operating status or check error messages through the network. Engineers can quickly locate the fault point when a fault occurs, prepare spare parts in advance (hardware problems) or solve the problem remotely (software problems). A further application of remote maintenance is proactive warning: By analyzing the equipment's operating status, it can warn of potentially aging components, notify engineers in advance, and schedule a time with the customer for replacement. This can reduce unplanned downtime for customers, thereby reducing customer losses and maintenance costs. Remote maintenance originated in the dial-up Internet era more than 20 years ago and has become increasingly useful in the last ten years with the maturity of related technologies. This remote maintenance approach is also very suitable for small manufacturers and third-party maintenance companies. Don't think that only large companies can do remote maintenance. As long as you are familiar with the instrument software architecture and know the location of the relevant log files, third-party engineers can also view the equipment status through the network and perform certain remote maintenance work. Of course, this requires a relatively high level of familiarity with the equipment.

However, to use this remote maintenance, there must be a prerequisite, that is, the equipment is designed with a remote maintenance interface. If remote Sign In permissions are not opened during the initial design, or if there is no network interface on the machine, this method cannot be used.

In fact, large companies also face this dilemma. In some remote areas, network conditions are poor, or some older models are inconvenient to access the network.

At this time, we need to use the high-end company's fourth strategy to save maintenance costs:

Seeking help from hospital equipment department engineers

No matter how fast the manufacturer's engineers arrive, they are not as fast as the hospital's equipment department engineers. Therefore, if the hospital's equipment department engineers can be trained accordingly, when equipment malfunctions occur, the manufacturer's engineers can provide remote guidance via WeChat. Simple problems can be solved on-site, and for complex problems, preparations can be made in advance. This can effectively reduce the engineers' travel time and expenses. Manufacturers or third-party engineers can prepare some pictures or videos in advance to help equipment department engineers disassemble the corresponding components or perform relevant calibrations. What if the hospital is too small and does not have an equipment department engineer? At this time, equipment department engineers from nearby hospitals can be hired part-time and trained to become agents in a certain region. In this aspect, domestic manufacturers and third-party maintenance companies have considerable advantages compared to foreign multinational companies. Foreign companies have very strict restrictions on employing customers' staff, while domestic small companies or third-party maintenance companies have much less concern in this aspect. As long as problems can be solved at low cost, why not?

The ultimate method to reduce maintenance costs:

Having said so much, there is actually another very important method to reduce maintenance costs, which I consider to be the ultimate method: that is, during the design phase, the stability of the equipment is designed to be higher; better materials are used during manufacturing, so that failures will naturally be reduced.

This view may be considered too simplistic--Who wouldn't want to put more effort into designing and manufacturing better machines? What you may not know is that, due to the current trend of lowest-bid wins, customers are extremely price-sensitive, forcing manufacturers to focus on saving manufacturing costs rather than designing and manufacturing more reliable instruments. In order to save money, factories have made modifications, only to find that they have brought about other problems, requiring after-sales engineers to spend thousands to remedy the situation. This type of situation has been frequently reported in recent years.1For the sake of saving money, modifications were made, but this resulted in additional issues, necessitating the intervention of after-sales engineers at a cost of several thousand. Such situations have become increasingly common in recent years.

Therefore, more and more manufacturers are proposing the concept of whole-life-cycle cost, which means calculating the total cost of ownership from the beginning of machine manufacturing, to installation and use, and finally to the machine's eventual scrapping. This shows that although the machine's selling Price may be higher, its stable quality leads to lower maintenance costs in the later stages. Consequently, the total cost incurred during the entire life cycle of this machine is actually lower.

In the article mentioned at the beginning, the assumption made was one ofDReight repairs per year. If more effort were put into design and manufacturing, reducing the number of repairs to four per year, the annual repair cost could be reduced to1around tens of thousands of Yuan. Combined with the low-cost After-sale Service methods mentioned earlier, the final reduction in repair costs could be even greater.

One can learn from others' experience."In today's society, even the landlords don't have much surplus grain, so everyone is looking for ways to save money. The above methods used by those high-end companies to reduce maintenance costs are presented here for your reference. I hope you like them!