CASE STUDY / VELCO - FIRE PROTECTION AND SMOKE SAFETY

Velco has been involved in fire protection and in-house hazard prevention for over 50 years. Velco's service department maintains extinguishers, fire hose reels, and dry extinguishing lines. In addition to servicing extinguishers, Velco also services and provides training for emergency and escape route lighting, first aid kits, and automated external defibrillators (AED). Velco is based in the Netherlands and employs around 20 field service employees who can serve 10,000 customers.

Velco's goal is to assist companies with disaster preparedness. With a nationwide technical field service, professional advisors, and experienced trainers, all field assignments were handled manually, through a single scheduling team.

Unnecessary kilometres were driven, wasting time and money; there were simply too many human-powered calculations to realise any efficiency. Increasingly apparent was the also importance in safeguarding the knowledge required to schedule 'skills per assignment' (the technicians' skills and other restrictions in order not to be left open to the risks of staff turnover). Every field resource had their own region, which meant that the division of labour was not proportional and employees could not help each other. Management knew of the missed growth opportunities, and turned to real-time optimisation.