Cimetrics, the leading supplier of BACnet technology, is a Boston-based company that provides automatic analysis, diagnostics and reporting to building operators with a tool called Infometrics. (Lee et al. 2007). Infometrics is a unique tool in the sense that it is purely service based and therefore there is no software offered for the customer. The data is analysed and all the reports are reviewed by a Cimetrics worker before anything is sent to the customer. The worker therefore acts as a filter providing the customer with only relevant and accurate reports. (Ulickey et al. 2010). The advantage of using Info-metrics is that a site does not need additional staff resources to maintain the fault detec-tion system and the existing operator staff can focus on resolving issues noted by an outside engineer. A potential down-side of Infometrics pure service model could be the on-going expense for the service, especially if the noticed problems do not produce sav-ings when fixed. (Ulickey et al. 2010).
Infometrics has a clear process. At first, one year’s worth of utility bills and a points list from the building´s BMS are gathered and then a proposal is generated for the site. The proposal includes the costs from connecting to the site and from the monitoring (Ulickey et al. 2010). If the customer still shows interest, the site BMS is reached via Two buildings at the
2000-2001 WBD and the OA/E module were shown to suc-cessfully identify a number of major problems with the air handlers
The overall annual savings for the air handlers were estimated to be from $750 to $1750
the Symphony Tow-ers in San Diego 4 air handlers 55, 000 m2 PNNL-14239
2000-2002 Problems with all four AHUs were identified The savings were estimated from one air handler only, because in the other three, there were faulty sensors
The estimated annual cooling energy savings from correcting the problem found by WBD were 81,000 kWh with a corresponding value of about $12,200
Table 3. The WBD implementations (Pratt et al. 2002).
Cimetrics cache- poller and all the needed data are transferred to the Cimetrics servers.
When all the needed data are gathered, the data monitoring starts. The diagnostics and other reports of Infometrics are monitored daily, year round and the most critical prob-lems and potential additional energy savings are written up and reported in the anomaly report at an interval specified by contract. The anomaly report includes diagnostics and recommended solutions. (Ulickey et al. 2010). There is a sample report in the figure 21, revealing the content of the reports in more detail.
Figure 21. Infometrics example report (Ulickey et al. 2010).
There is little technical information available concerning the Infometrics processes, as the tool is quite new. The interview of the Cimetrics CEO (Sinclair 2012) showed to be the best and only source of technical information from Infometrics: The approach of Infometrics is bottom up as the Infometrics focuses to problems in individual HVAC machines. Infometrics has a rule based diagnostics machine, which has scalable data collecting algorithms capable of collecting data from wide range of building automation systems. The raw data is run through algorithms and cleansed to prepare it for the diag-nostics. (Sinclair 2012).
One site using Infometrics tool was interviewed in the Ulickey et al. 2010 research and the customer had found the diagnostics provided by Infometrics nearly 100% accurate.
The actual rate of diagnostics is however unknown as the customer only sees the reports that are foreseen by a Cimetrics worker. With the site, the report was issued monthly initially, but dropped to quarterly once savings were realized. In the first year the ser-vice paid for itself, but however in the following years, according to the customer, the on-going fee was difficult to justify to as the savings decreased when the biggest prob-lems were fixed.
11 SERVICE MANAGEMENT THEORIES
One of the main concepts in this work is the analysis concerning the implementation of the tool under research to the work of eService. The work of eService is centred on pro-viding service, so in order to be able to evaluate the effects of the tool under research to the service the service quality of eService, one must recognize what elements there are in the service business. In this chapter, the backgrounds of the service management are discussed an introduction to service management is provided and the base for evaluating the development of the service of eService is created.
Service management is concerned about the delivery of service to the customers. Ser-vice management involves understanding the needs of the consumer, managing the processes and methods used in providing of those services while maintaining a com-mitment to continuous improvement of services. Service Management is the foundation to organizational management and as such is a critical component to organizational suc-cess.
During the last several decades there has been major activity concerning the transforma-tion from producing output to offering services. Many leading edge firms and research-ers have found that competitive advantage can be enhanced through service. (Davies 2003). Therefore there is a major need of focusing the orientation of firms towards a more service oriented state. Including more services in the total offerings of firms has several economic advantages: It is said to improve the sales of goods as the respond to demand improves. Also the services generally have higher margins than products (The Economist 2000) and services provide a more stable source of revenue as they are resis-tant to the economic cycles that drive investment and equipment purchases. (Oliva and Kallenberg 2003). Including more services in the total offerings is said also to lengthen customer relationships and create growth opportunities in already mature markets. (Da-vies 2003). Services are also less visible and more labour dependent and therefore much more difficult to copy, thus becoming a sustainable source of competitive advantage.
(Oliva and Kallenberg 2003).