JP2006127070A - Proposal type maintenance sales method for industrial personal computer - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a proposal type sales method for an industrial personal computer capable of concretely exhibiting a risk degree of failure occurrence of the industrial PC or each component to a customer by using a failure index to promote a component exchange. <P>SOLUTION: A maintenance estimate management server 100 receives a failure index value calculated by use of operation log information and installation environment log information collected by various kinds of sensors installed to the industrial PC 200 and a failure rate database 304. The maintenance estimate management server 100 calculates a future maintenance price transition of the maintenance target PC 200 on the basis of the received failure index value, compares and analyzes the received failure index value and a past failure index value, and exhibits a risk portion obtained by failure index diagnosis of the maintenance target PC referring to a failure index history database 103 and a maintenance history database 104 on a Web screen of the customer to propose improvement for reducing a premium. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention is suitable for setting a maintenance service fee for each device and making an improvement proposal for reducing the maintenance fee using a failure index when proposing a maintenance service for an industrial personal computer (hereinafter referred to as an industrial PC). The present invention relates to a proposal-type maintenance sales method for industrial computers.

  As a conventional industrial PC maintenance and sales method, as described in [Patent Document 1], various sensors and test programs are installed in the PC, and operation log information and installation environment log information are collected. The purchase price is determined according to the threshold value recorded in the estimated price database that is analyzed and recorded for each part, the purchase price for each part is presented on the customer's Web, and the part that the customer has agreed and sent is the estimated price. There is a communication-type maintenance service sales method including a recycling model in which a charge is sent after purchase is confirmed.

  Also, generally, a sensor for measuring the environment from the factory shipment and a storage device for holding time data are provided inside the PC, and the installation environment data obtained from these PCs are collected to construct an installation environment failure prediction database. There is a communication-type repair and maintenance service sales method for issuing a failure prediction notification when installation environment data obtained from a PC exceeds a threshold. Also, the error code generated by executing the test and maintenance program on the PC is received, the error code is analyzed with reference to the error code database, the remaining life of the part, the part that needs to be replaced is identified, There is a communication-type maintenance service sales method for displaying a proposed maintenance service including the part name and message of the identified part on the customer's Web.

JP 2004-030349 A

  Industrial PCs are applied to various systems and devices that require long-term operation and reliability. For maintenance when a failure occurs, on-site maintenance services (business trip repair services) and send-back maintenance services (Returned repair service) is performed. Among these maintenance services, there is a fixed maintenance fee contract for performing maintenance services within the annual contract fee, regardless of how many failures occur due to the annual contract. This flat-rate maintenance fee contract is expensive for maintenance PCs per industrial PC and requires a maintenance fee for the number of units used. Since the fee is high, it is difficult for users to receive maintenance services.

  The reason why insurance premiums are high is because industrial PCs use highly reliable parts that can operate stably even in harsh installation environments, so maintenance parts are expensive, and industrial PCs This is because they are often used in places where the installation environment is strict, and maintenance companies tend to set maintenance charges higher, including the risk that the frequency of failure occurrence cannot be predicted.

  Maintenance companies want to sell services with a reduced maintenance fee in order to increase the number of customers who take out insurance services, but products that are used in places with poor installation environments are likely to suffer many failures, There was a business risk of being in the red, there was a problem that the maintenance fee could not be lowered and the maintenance contract rate did not increase.

  In addition, since industrial PCs are products premised on long-term use, periodic replacement parts are designated by the manufacturer and periodic replacement is recommended from the viewpoint of preventive maintenance. However, the majority of customers tend to use it until a failure occurs without regular replacement. For this reason, once a failure occurs, an unexpected emergency response cost such as transporting maintenance parts by a porter, for example, in addition to the replacement part price for both the customer and manufacturer for early recovery There is.

  There is also a method of presenting the failure rate of individual maintenance parts directly to the customer when proposing periodic replacement of parts. Generally, the failure rate is important information on the manufacturer side, so the manufacturer and the maintenance company directly contact the customer. The failure rate was not presented, and there was no means for suggesting the risk of failure to the customer with specific numerical values.

  An object of the present invention is to provide a proposal-type sales of an industrial personal computer that can specifically present to a customer the risk of failure of individual parts or industrial PCs by using fault indicators, and can promote the replacement of parts. It is to provide a method.

  Another object of the present invention is to provide a proposal-type sales method for an industrial PC capable of making detailed improvement proposals in units of parameters of the installation environment by acquiring and analyzing the installation environment log and operation log, and reducing the maintenance fee. Is to provide.

  In order to achieve the above object, the proposed industrial personal computer sales method of the present invention receives operation log information and installation environment log information accumulated in each log storage area of a maintenance target PC in which various sensors are installed. The failure index value is calculated, the maintenance fee transition is calculated based on the calculated failure index value, and the failure index diagnosis is performed by comparing and analyzing the failure index and the past failure index. Presenting the dangerous part on the customer's Web screen and making an improvement proposal for reducing the insurance fee.

  According to the present invention, by presenting a failure index for each maintenance part of an industrial PC to a customer using the failure index, a specific component having a high risk of failure in the near future is specifically presented. By promoting replacement, maintenance sales that realize preventive maintenance become possible.

  In addition, in order to lower the maintenance fee by calculating the transition of the maintenance fee of the industrial PC based on the failure index of the industrial PC obtained by acquiring and analyzing the installation environment log and operation log of the industrial PC The maintenance fee can be lowered and the maintenance contract rate can be improved by making a proposal for improving the failure index of the customer and implementing the proposed improvement by the customer.

  An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

  As shown in FIG. 1, the maintenance company 1 is provided with a maintenance estimate management server 100 and a gateway 107 connected to the maintenance estimate management server 100 via an intranet 106 of a maintenance company dedicated network. The maintenance estimate management server 100 includes a customer information database 102 that manages the customer name and device configuration of each customer, a failure index history database 103 that manages a history of failure indexes of each customer device, and a maintenance history of each customer device. A maintenance history database 104 that manages the maintenance fee and a maintenance fee setting database 105 that manages the maintenance fee are provided, and a Web page 101 for a screen for referring to and inputting each database is provided.

  The purchaser 2 is provided with a maintenance target PC 200 and a communication terminal 202 such as a mobile phone, and the maintenance target PC is provided with a browser 201 which is a screen for displaying and inputting a maintenance estimate. The gateway 107 and the communication terminal 202 are connected via the public network 500.

A maintenance management server 300 is installed in the manufacturer 3, and is connected to the gateway 107 of the maintenance company 1 through the public network 500, the gateway 307, and an intranet 306 that is a dedicated network for the manufacturer. As described above, the maintenance estimate management server 100 of the maintenance company 1, the maintenance target PC 200 of the purchaser 2, and the maintenance management server 300 of the manufacturer 3 are connected to each other via the public network 500.

  The maintenance management server 300 includes a customer information database 302 that manages the customer name and device configuration of each customer, a log database 303 that manages the installation environment log and operation log of each customer device, and the maintenance that constitutes the maintenance target PC 200. A failure rate database 304 for managing the field failure rate of parts, and a failure index database 305 for managing failure indexes for each component constituting the maintenance target PC 200 are provided.

  FIG. 2 shows a hardware configuration of the maintenance target PC 200. The maintenance target PC 200 includes a CPU 411, an LSIA 412, a CD-ROM disk 421, a floppy (registered trademark) disk 431, a memory 451, a hard disk 461, and the like. These parts are roughly divided into a CPU 411 as an assembly A410 and a CD-ROM disk 421 as an assembly B420, a floppy disk 431 as an assembly C, a memory 451 as an assembly E, and a hard disk 461 as an assembly F for each maintainable part. Has been. A real-time clock 441, a temperature sensor 442, and a vibration sensor 443 are mounted on the maintenance target PC 200 as an assembly D.

  In the data area in the hard disk 461, a user area 462 that is open to the customer side and can be used freely by the customer is provided, and an error code logging area 463 is provided in the user area 462. In the manufacturer area 464, an energization time storage area 465, a temperature log storage area 466, a retry error log storage area 467, an access count log storage area 468, and a vibration log storage area 469 are provided.

  In the energization time storage area 465, an energization time history of the maintenance target PC 200 measured by counting with the real time clock 441 is recorded. In the temperature log storage area 466, a history of temperatures periodically measured by the temperature sensor 442 is recorded. In the retry error log storage area 467, the number of retry errors such as HDD or FDD is recorded. The access count log storage area 468 records the access count of the hard disk 461, floppy disk 431, and memory 451, and the vibration log storage area 469 records vibration data measured by the vibration sensor 443.

  As shown in FIG. 3, the maintenance target PC 200 is connected to the maintenance estimate management server 100 by performing access processing to the maintenance estimate management server 100 of the maintenance company 1 via the public network 500 in step 150.

In step 151, referring to the customer information database 102 of the maintenance company 1, the device configuration information of the maintenance target PC 200 is acquired, and the customer information of the maintenance management server 300 of the manufacturer 3 from the maintenance estimate management server 100 via the public network 500. A product information acquisition process of the maintenance target PC 200 is performed to access the database 302 and acquire product information in units of individual maintenance parts.

  In step 152, the maintenance management server 300 of the manufacturer 3 accesses the maintenance target PC 200 via the public network 500, and the operation log accumulated in each log storage area of the manufacturer area of the maintenance target PC 200 is stored in the log database 303 of the manufacturer 3. Operation log acquisition processing to be stored in the. This operation log includes environment log information.

  In step 153, failure index setting processing for calculating the latest failure index value using the log database 303 and failure rate database 304 of the manufacturer 3 is performed. In this failure index setting process, the failure rate data range for each part of the industrial PC is calculated from the failure rate data for each component that constitutes the industrial PC registered in the failure rate database. Then, the failure index is calculated by weighting the failure occurrence frequency with respect to the calculated failure rate range. The calculated latest failure index value is sent to the maintenance estimate management server 100 via the public network 500. In step 154, the maintenance estimate management server 100 performs a maintenance fee transition calculation process for calculating a future maintenance fee transition of the maintenance target PC 200 based on the received latest failure index value.

  In step 155, the maintenance management server 300 of the maintenance company 1 performs a comparative analysis process for comparing and analyzing the latest failure index and the past failure index in units of individual maintenance parts, and the failure index history database 104 and the maintenance history database. 103 is used to perform a failure index diagnosis of the maintenance target PC 200. Then, the dangerous part obtained by the failure index diagnosis is presented to the customer, and an improvement proposal for reducing the maintenance fee is made.

  In step 156, confirmation of implementation of the improvement proposal is made. In step 157, if the customer implements the improvement proposal, the price is reduced. If the improvement is not implemented in step 158, the price increase is selected.

  The transition of the assumed maintenance fee is set as follows. FIG. 4 shows the relationship between the failure index and the maintenance fee setting.

  The maintenance company 1 calculates a transition 752 of an assumed maintenance fee in consideration of the minimum maintenance fee 756 and the installation environment risk fee 755 in the case of a new product, based on the standard failure index. When the installation environment condition of the maintenance target PC 200 is bad, the failure index becomes large with respect to the transition 752 of the assumed maintenance fee. Therefore, the gradient of the maintenance fee is larger than the transition 752 of the assumed maintenance fee and the maintenance is performed. The maintenance fee is set high as shown in fee transition (A) 750. When the installation environment condition of the maintenance target PC 200 is good, the failure index is small, so that the gradient of the maintenance fee is smaller than the transition 752 of the assumed maintenance fee, and maintenance is performed as in the maintenance fee transition (B) 753. The price is set low.

  The maintenance fee 754 is the risk limit of the maintenance service that can be provided by the maintenance company 1. In the case of the assumed maintenance fee transition 752, the maintenance fee risk limit (B) 758 is reached in the fourth year. When the installation environment is poor (A) 750, the maintenance charge risk limit (A) 751 is reached in the 2.5th year. Therefore, maintenance company 1 proposes to improve the installation environment or replace parts within 2.5 years in order to avoid risks.

  When the customer implements the proposed improvement, the slope of the maintenance fee will become smaller and the risk can be avoided. Therefore, an appropriate low maintenance fee can be provided by subtracting a part of the installation environment risk fee 755 from the maintenance fee. It becomes possible. In addition, when the customer continuously performs some improvement within a cycle of 2.5 years or less, the maintenance service can be continuously provided within the maintenance fee 754. For this reason, even if the maintenance fee is set to a fixed amount, the business risk of the maintenance company can be avoided.

  If the customer does not improve the installation environment and replaces parts in the second year, the installation environment remains the same, so there is no change in the failure index, and the slope of the maintenance fee does not change. For this reason, after the parts replacement, the maintenance target PC is in the same state as the new one by replacing the parts, and the starting point of the transition of the maintenance fee is the minimum maintenance fee 756, and the transition of the maintenance fee (C) 757 Become.

  FIG. 5 shows an example of a Web screen for failure index diagnosis. The Web screen 600 displays a fault index diagnosis title 601, a maintenance target PC serial number 602, an index calculation formula 603, a part-by-part index list 604, and a diagnosis result sentence 605.

  The index calculation formula 603 shows HDD index, CD-ROM index, FDD index, memory index, power index, etc. As shown in FIG. 5, the HDD index is calculated by temperature + energization time + vibration + access count. Is done. The part-by-part index list 604 displays installation environment parameters for energization time, vibration, temperature, number of accesses, number of retries, memory error log, and the like, which are environment information. The fault index, HDD, CD-ROM Etc., an index of each part is displayed. In addition, the current index total and the previous index total of each part are displayed. In the diagnosis result sentence 605, a comparison result with the previous time, a possibility of occurrence of a defect, a proposal content, and the like are displayed.

  FIG. 6 shows an example of a maintenance fee and improvement proposal Web screen. On the Web screen 700, a maintenance fee and improvement proposal title 701, a transition graph 706 of the maintenance fee, a description 705 of the graph line, a fee 702 at the time of parts replacement, a maintenance fee increase (after the second year) 703, and an improvement of the installation environment An hour fee 704, an improvement proposal sentence 707, and proposal implementation confirmation buttons 708 and 709 are displayed.

  In the example shown in FIG. 6, it is shown that the normal maintenance fee trend of the solid line exceeds the normal maintenance fee in the second year and beyond, and is on the value after the second year. This shows that in the second year, the fee for improving the installation environment will be reduced. In addition, the change of the charge at the time of parts replacement of the one-dot chain line is shown. The improvement proposal sentence 707 shows a comment when the improvement is performed and a comment when the improvement is not performed.

  When the customer examines the failure index diagnosis, the maintenance fee, and the content of the improvement proposal and does not implement the improvement, the customer selects the confirmation button 709 “do not implement the proposal”. When the maintenance company 1 confirms that the confirmation button 709 “do not make a proposal” is input, the maintenance company 1 increases the maintenance fee. When the customer side performs improvement, the confirmation button 708 of “Implement proposal” is selected. When the maintenance company 1 confirms that the “execute proposal” confirmation button 708 has been input, the maintenance company 1 sets the maintenance fee cheaply. By proposing a reduction in the maintenance fee here, an improvement in the maintenance contract rate can be expected, and a maintenance sales system that enables preventive maintenance by promoting replacement of maintenance parts can be realized.

  According to the present embodiment, it is possible to propose parts replacement by specifically presenting parts that are likely to fail in the near future using the fault index. In addition, in order to lower the maintenance fee by calculating the transition of the maintenance fee of the industrial PC based on the failure index of the industrial PC obtained by acquiring and analyzing the installation environment log and operation log of the industrial PC If the customer proposes improvement of the failure index and the customer implements improvement, the maintenance fee can be reduced. If the improvement proposal of the failure index is not implemented, the business risk of the future maintenance company can be reduced by raising the maintenance fee. Further, by implementing an improvement that lowers the failure index, the reliability of the system or apparatus on the customer side can be improved.

  In addition, when setting a maintenance fee that includes the business risk that the maintenance company considers from the change in the maintenance fee that the maintenance company has set as a standard in advance, the maintenance fee will be analyzed by comparing and analyzing the change in the maintenance fee for industrial PCs. The limit point of the future business risk that can be provided within can be determined. In addition, an improvement proposal for reducing the failure index is made before the limit point is reached, and the maintenance fee can be lowered by the customer implementing the improvement, and the maintenance contract rate can be improved.

  Also, by providing failure index diagnosis based on the failure index and analyzing the latest failure index and past failure index, it is possible to make detailed improvement proposals in parameter units of the installation environment, and failure may occur in the near future Since highly reliable parts can be specifically presented to customers and parts replacement proposals can be made, a maintenance sales system that enables preventive maintenance can be realized.

It is a block diagram of the system which is one Example of this invention. It is a block diagram of the product of maintenance object PC. It is a flowchart of improvement proposal by log collection and failure index analysis. It is a figure which shows the relationship between a failure parameter | index and a maintenance charge setting. It is a top view which shows the example of a web screen of failure index diagnosis. It is a top view which shows the example of a maintenance fee and the web screen of an improvement proposal.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Maintenance company, 2 ... Purchaser, 3 ... Manufacturer, 100 ... Maintenance estimate management server, 101 ... Web page, 106, 306 ... Intranet, 107, 307 ... Gateway, 200 ... Maintenance target PC, 201 ... Browser, 202 ... Communication terminal 300 ... maintenance management server 410 ... assembly A, 420 ... assembly B, 430 ... assembly C, 440 ... assembly D, 450 ... assembly E, 460 ... assembly F.

Claims (5)

  Receives operation log information and installation environment log information obtained from various sensors accumulated in each log storage area of the maintenance target PC, calculates the failure index value, and calculates the maintenance fee transition based on the calculated failure index value Then, the failure index diagnosis is performed by comparing and analyzing the failure index and the past failure index, and an improvement proposal for reducing the insurance fee by presenting the dangerous part obtained by the failure index diagnosis on the Web screen of the customer is performed. A proposal-type maintenance and sales method for industrial personal computers.   The maintenance estimate management server receives operation log information and installation environment log information collected by various sensors installed on an industrial PC, and a failure index value calculated using a failure rate database. Based on the received failure index value, calculate the future maintenance fee transition of the maintenance target PC, compare and analyze the received failure index value and the past failure index value, and refer to the failure index history database and the maintenance history database. Proposal-type maintenance sales of industrial personal computers that perform failure index diagnosis of maintenance target PCs and present improvement parts for lowering insurance charges by presenting the dangerous parts obtained by the failure index diagnosis on the customer's Web screen Method.   The failure index value is calculated from the failure rate data for each part constituting the industrial PC registered in the failure rate database, to which failure rate data range each industrial PC part currently has 3. A proposed maintenance sales method for an industrial personal computer according to claim 1, wherein a failure index is calculated by weighting the failure occurrence frequency with respect to the calculated failure rate range.   3. The proposed maintenance sales method for an industrial personal computer according to claim 1, wherein an index calculation formula, an index list for each part, and a sentence of a diagnosis result are displayed on the customer's Web screen. 3. The proposed maintenance sales method for an industrial personal computer according to claim 1, wherein a transition graph of insurance premiums, a raise in maintenance fee, a fee for improving the installation environment, and a text of improvement proposal are displayed on the Web screen of the customer. .

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