How many Field Service Engineers do I need to support my customer base?

When products, such as capital equipment, are large, heavy, or integrated in facilities, it is nearly impossible nor feasible to return these products to the manufacturer should service work be required. Also, High-end products, developed to the edge of their technology, are fragile and sensitive to any kind of disturbance. These products are complicated to move and they may also require frequent maintenance, and eventually repair.

Due to high cost of these products and requirements for frequent service, customers demand competent and sustainable Service & Support. Professional Field Service Engineers (FSE) are required to service these products at the customer’s site and in a timely manner.

Service departments, especially operating as a profit center, need to have a clear understanding of their field product base, corresponding field service resources required, and operation costs to feasibly operate the service department while meeting customer demands and service revenue goals.

Considering the demand for prompt service, Service Managers need to know how many FSEs are required to support the product base in a timely manner. This boils down to two main questions:

a)????How much labor time (FSEs) is available per year?

b)????How much product time (product base) is required per year?

If more product time is required than labor time available, there is a need to either operate the service department more efficiently or/and hire additional FSEs.

Required FSEs = Total required product hours per year / Available Labor hours per FSE per year

Example – Required product hours per year

Total installed base [Qty.]: 500

New installations [Qty.]: 10 @ 3 days per installation (3 * 8h/day * 10 = 240h)

Preventive Maintenance [Qty.]: 490 @ 1 day per PM (1 * 8h/day * 490 = 3,920h)

Repairs, ~5% [Qty.]: 24 @ 1 day per repair (1 * 8h/day * 24 = 192h)

Required on-site travel per job [Qty.]: 524 @ 2 * 4h/way (2 * 4h/way * 524 = 4,192h)

Total required product hours per year ≈ 8,544h

Example – Available labor hours per FSE per year

Working days: 260 (8h/day * 260 days = 2,080h)

Vacation days: 15 (8h/day * 15 days = 120h)

PTO days: 5 (8h/day * 5 days = 40h)

Total available labor hours per FSE per year ≈ 1,920h

Required FSEs [Qty.] = 8,544h / 1,920h ≈ 5 FSEs

In the example above, it takes 5 FSEs to service an installed base of 500 products per year. Or, in other words, each FSE can service 100 products annually.

Obviously, this calculation is ideal assuming 100% utilization of FSEs and no scheduling conflicts. While this is wishful thinking, a factor of about 1.5 should be considered to the equation when calculating the amount of required FSEs.

Required FSEs = Annual product hours / Annual labor hours per FSE * 1.5

One final thought about utilization of FSEs: Field Service work is fun and rewarding, but also can be very stressful on the Engineer. Especially constant overnight travel, being away from family and social life, dealing with tough customers, challenging technical issues, flight delays and on and on… Mostly due to cost savings, FSEs get utilized to the point where they burn out and move on to another job. The impact on a company with high employee turnover is more costly than hiring additional resources. With this in mind, reasonable field utilization is key to keep FSEs long term, maintain quality of work, and therefore customer satisfaction.