Ericsson DIALOG - Maintenance Strategies and Cost Reduction

7. MAINTENANCE
For most telephone administrations, the maintenance costs of a
complete network, make up a large share of the operating costs.
Since these costs affect the financial result, it is obvious that
maintenance costs should be reduced wherever possible . It is
equally obvious that a telephone administration, making attempts
to lower the maintenance costs of plants in operation, should
request the manufacturer of the plants. to take measures for
facilitating these attempts.
Since the telephone instruments are an important and integral
part of the network. it is natural that special attention is paid to
their maintenance.
So. with the design of the DIALOG telephone instrument, great
consideration should be paid to those factors that affect the main-
tenance financially. Before it was possible to solve the relevant
problems successfully and systematically, each part of the tele-
phone instrument had to be improved. For several years our
engineers were occupied with this task. This work continued until
a point was reached. when it was decided that the time had come
to proceed along new and more radical lines. Our aim was to
produce a telephone instrument based on reliable. tested, high
quality components. either already available or available later
during the process of construction. The properties and design
of this telephone were to have the prerequisites for reducing the
main expense items of maintenance.
A close study of the maintenance costs for telephone instruments,
based on our own experience of maintenance and that of our cus-
tomers, shows that the main expense items are: staff, travelling,
tools and instruments.
The most obvious way to lower staff costs is by decreasing the
number of staff, by utilizing the qualified men better and allocating
routine work to less qualified people. But is this way in line with
the desire to keep. or improve the present maintenance standard?
Our answer to this is Yes. provided that the maintenance of the
telephones concerned can be simplified and that the telephones have
such properties that the need for fault-correcting measures is
reduced.
If the travelling expenses for each fault correction can be lowered,
the whole travelling expenses account can be reduced. This can
be achieved by careful planning of the routes, effective fault
correction to avoid repeated visits. and telephone instruments
requiring a minimum of attention so that, except for obvious faults,
complaints may not arise.
The expense item for tools and instruments can be reduced if the
design of the telephones is simple and if repair work in the field
can be limited to replacing a few easily exchangeable parts. More
complicated repairs can be carried out in a central workshop.
What are the properties of L M Ericsson's DIALOG that enable
maintenance costs to be reduced?
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