The Zone-Scheduler system

At this point, we're through with the main discussion about scheduling and dispatch. Please just read this section only if you have special needs. This section only pertains to you if you want to coordinate with other companies in a manner that allows them to schedule and dispatch appointments on your behalf (such as through ServiceBench, for example) or if yours is simply a very high volume operation (i.e., ten trucks or more). Otherwise, you might want to skip this section.

Initially, the Zone-Scheduler system came about because Whirlpool Corporation wanted to schedule jobs on behalf of its independent servicers. In other words, a consumer calls into Whirlpool's National Call Center with a problem with their new appliance. Instead of simply giving the consumer the telephone number of some independent servicers they could call or taking the consumer's information and themselves calling a local servicer (who'd then contact the consumer to schedule), Whirlpool figured it would be a much higher level of consumer service if their call-taker could to the whole thing: take the complaint and, correspondingly, and go ahead and schedule the call on the intended independent servicers behalf.

To make that system work, Whirlpool went to work with ServiceBench (essentially, a web-based information processing intermediary). They set up a system whereby each independent servicer can divide his territory into any number of "Zones" and indicate the number of jobs that may be scheduled for each zone on any given day (or for a particular segment of the day, if preferred). As "slots" get filled up from the servicer's end, he goes to the ServiceBench website to indicate the decreased availability. Thus, Whirlpool's National Call Center constantly knows which days the servicer can schedule within any given zone.

It's an intelligent system, and many other manufacturers have followed suit. It's definitely the wave of the future.

This means your service management software system needs a means of working with the issue of "Zone Availability." We've worked this out rather wonderfully, and it's integral to ServiceDesk. Its operation is described in a separate document found here. If you need help in this area, read and follow the instructions in that document.

As a final note, even if you're not set up to take dispatches from one of these kinds of operations if you're running ten trucks or more, you may find the Zone-Scheduler system is a somewhat more efficient means of allocating your jobs than is the DispatchMap.