Flo-Tech E-book-Avoiding Device Failure

Avoiding
Device Failure:
How to Reduce
Downtime
by 80%
(or more)

AvoidingDeviceFailure:HowtoReduceDowntimeby80%(ormore)
Contents
How to Reduce
Downtime
by 80%
(or more)
Avoiding
Device Failure:
1 Introduction
2 Predictive Technology Overview
4 Predictive Service [Part 1]:
The Evolution
5 Key Beneﬁts to Alert Management System (AMS)
How To Reduce Downtime by 80% (or more)
14 Predictive Service in Action
17 Summary
19 Your Next Step
20 About Flo-Tech

Let’s face it.
When it comes to managing
your print service . . .
You don’t want downtime.
Or to be inconvenienced.
And most of all—you don’t want to keep your customers waiting.
All you want is for your device to work.
But in the normal service environment, when a device breaks,
you call a technician to come and ﬁx it.
You’re reacting to a situation.
And most likely you’ll have to wait for hours—
sometimes days.
That’s because the device isn’t being monitored;
or it’s because there’s no automation involved.
The result?
Everything becomes a ﬁre drill.
An emergency.
And chaos prevails.
1

A better alternative to the reactive model of
device maintenance and repair is to leverage
today’s technology and use monitoring tools,
data and analytics to be more proactive and
predictive (as opposed to reactive).
Predictive technology is the next
evolution in managed print services.
Predictive technology creates order
out of chaos.
Predictive technology has been around since
the 1960s, when the ﬁrst missions to the moon
started. NASA needed to monitor its devices
and have redundancies in place; the engineers
wanted to make sure they prevented the
components of their spacecraft from failing.
Over time, predictive technology
spread to other industries
The aerospace industry adopted predictive
technology for jet engines: Jet engines are
monitored so that when a part is going to fail,
the maintenance crew can replace that part
before it does.
Take a look at the medical industry.
The medical industry uses predictive technology
to monitor medical devices day and night.
Can you imagine a medical team—in the middle
of surgery—waiting hours for a service
technician to arrive with parts for a broken
device?
Other industries using predictive technology
include HVAC and automobile manufacturers.
2
So what’s the solution?
Predictive technology.
Through Flo-Tech’s Predictive
Service, if a device appears to be
failing, a service tech is dispatched
with the proper components to
repair the faulty machine—before
it actually fails. This reduces (or
nearly eliminates) most of the
customer’s downtime and reduces
(or nearly eliminates) the need for
reacting at the last minute.

3
With this Ebook, you’ll
discover how Predictive
Service can benefit your
business by:
• Reducing the need to call the help
desk and create service tickets
• Fixing devices right—the ﬁrst time
• Reducing emergency calls
• Creating a disruption-free business
• Increasing productivity
• Reducing device downtime by 80%
(or more)
Let’s get moving,
shall we?

does this sound familiar?
you’re on deadline.
you go to use a device.
and sure enough—it fails.
that’s not too surprising, right?
That’s what devices
and copiers do;
they print, jam
and break.
And when a device breaks,
everything becomes a ﬁre drill
Chaos erupts.
Productivity shuts down.
So you call your print service provider, pleading
for immediate help.
The response? You wind up waiting four, maybe
eight hours for a tech to arrive.
Worse—you could wait for days.
This is a reactive service.
Predictive Service [Part 1]:
4
The Evolution of Predictive Service
Reactive service is the ﬁrst of
four print management service
levels, culminating in
predictive service:
1. Reactive seRvice:
you call a service provider after
a device fails.
2. PReventative seRvice:
devices are put on a regular
maintenance schedule.
3. aMs (aleRt ManageMent
systeM) seRvice:
devices send service alerts to you.
4. PRedictive seRvice:
service happens before anyone or
any device alerts you.

1 Reactive service
2 Preventative service
5
Reactive service occurs when you call your
service provider after a device goes down.
What typically happens in a reactive
situation?
• The tech visits the customer and decides
repairs are needed.
• The tech goes back to the office.
• The service provider prepares an estimate
for the customer.
• The customer says yes or no to the repairs.
• Parts get ordered.
• The tech goes back to the customer and
repairs the device.
That’s not an efficient process, is it?
That’s because reactive service is disruptive.
It’s disruptive for the:
• Customer
• Community
• IT team (because they have to supervise
the service provider)
• The customer’s end user
Preventative service occurs when a service
provider comes out to your organization on a
regular schedule, for example once a year.
Technicians perform preventative
maintenance and use the necessary
resources to keep your whole fleet up
and running—whether the devices
need service or not.
A more strategic way to handle preventative
maintenance is through activity-based cleaning.
activity-based cleaning uses page volume
to determine the maintenance schedule.
For instance, if a printer printed X pages before
needing service, every three months a tech gets
dispatched to check those machines that have
printed the same page volume and haven’t had
a service call.
In this case, the maintenance and cleaning are
based on the device’s activity, which is less
disruptive and more effective for the customer.
Think about when a
company with 400 or 500
devices has problems—
it can get chaotic
in seconds!

3 Alert Management System
(AMS) service
6
In the Alert Management System
model, automation enters the
picture.
Instead of looking at the page volume, which
uses a little bit of analytics, AMS looks at the
alerts that the devices are feeding the network
and reacts as quickly as possible to ﬁx any
issues—before the end user experiences
problems.
With AMS, we can detect the maintenance
needed before the machine displays any
problems.
This approach is hyper-reactive because it uses
data and analytics to look for patterns.
Since AMS looks for patterns, paper
jams become more predictable
AMS enables the device to communicate
problems to Flo-Tech’s server. Then, our server
makes the decision about what to do.
If a service call is required, it
automatically creates that call.
In short, AMS:
• Is (somewhat) hyper-reactive
• Eliminates human interaction
• Looks for patterns
• Is not totally predictive, but moves toward a
predictive model
Here’s an example:
Let’s say the maintenance kit light goes on.
Before AMS, people usually ignored the
maintenance kit light until the image quality
was horrible—then it became an emergency.
Eventually, a service call was placed.

Predictive Service takes all of the known
historical device data and projects when a
component or a device is most likely to fail. It
sets thresholds prior to a device breaking down.
Flo-Tech’s Predictive Service evolved out of the
reactive service environment in which a tech
would arrive to an account, service the device,
and then leave.
But because the customer has such a large fleet
of devices, the tech would often get called back
into the customer’s office soon after the service,
requiring service for a different device.
One day, one of our technicians said,
“It’s great knowing which machine is
jamming today, but why don’t you tell
me which machine is going to fail
tomorrow? That way when I’m there, I don’t
have to park and go through security again—
I don’t have to do all the things that
inconvenience the customer.”
That’s when Flo-Tech set out to
develop Predictive Service
Predictive Service looks at the device data and
says, “Okay, we installed this part, which we
know usually lasts about 50,000 pages. By
monitoring the device (or predicting the page
volume trends), we could say this component is
probably going to fail by this date.”
You’ll learn more about Predictive Service and
how it can help your organization reduce
downtime by 80% (or more) in Part 3.
But before we dive into the world of predictive
technology, it’s important to take a closer look
at how AMS works and how it helped shape
Predictive Service; that’s coming up in Part 2,
5 Key Benefits of Alert Management System.
4 Predictive Service
7
We developed Predictive Service so we can dispatch a
technician who is properly trained, has the right parts
and has time to fix a device—before it ever fails.

Devices today are capable of reporting all kinds
of information.
For instance, let’s say you’re low on paper or
toner.
Or perhaps there’s a paper jam or some kind of
error code.
If you were to turn on alerts for a single device,
throughout one day you could potentially
receive 10–50 (or even more) notifications from
that device telling you what its status is.
Can you imagine how quickly you would
become inundated with alerts?
You’d soon shut them off, right?
And that’s what customers tend to do.
So when a customer calls us, we ask them:
“Have you turned on your HP Web Jetadmin
alerts?”
Many of them say, “Yes, we did—but we
turned them off within an hour because
the alerts were overpowering us.”
With all those alerts happening, customers feel
like they’re drinking from a fire hose!
But there is a way out.
AMS is a platform that can be used to remotely
monitor a customer’s printing and imaging fleet.
It’s designed to recognize the failure of a device
and react faster than end users.
AMS is also designed to tie seemingly
unassociated events together (e.g., error
patterns) and thereby predict some device
failures, such as paper jams.
The most important thing to
remember about AMS is that it’s
truly machine-to-machine
communication—there is no human
involvement. It does everything in an
automated fashion; that means a service tech
can be dispatched without any human
intervention.
8
5 Key Benefits of Alert
Management System (AMS)
I’m drowning
in alerts
over here!!
alert Management system (aMs)
t h e s o l u t i o n ?
Can you imagine turning on alerts for a fleet
of 100 devices (or even 1,000 devices)?

1. Email alerts
With AMS, you can set up your network devices
to send all email alerts to the AMS server via
email. That means it’s highly efficient and
doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth on the
customer’s network. In fact, AMS receives
500,000 emails a month from customer devices,
generating over six million data points a year for
fact gathering.
The easiest item is an email notification.
With AMS, we’re able to email the customer
with a message saying, “Hi, Joe. The printer on
the fourth floor in Conference Room B is
running low on toner. You can change it now.”
The best part about email alerts?
They are customizable—right down
to the level of the serial number of
any device.
So whenever the CEO’s office says that its
machine is jammed, AMS is flexible enough to
send an email every time that machine jams.
Again, in this instance, we’re not
servicing the device, we’re just
notifying the customer.
2. Dispatch technicians
Whenever an alert occurs, AMS can dispatch a
technician—24/7.
9
let’s go behind the scenes and look at the five key benefits
of aleRt ManageMent systeM (aMs)
When alerts are received at the AMS server,
many action items can be accomplished.
Once AMS sees an alert, it creates a
call in our system automatically—
saving customers time and money.

3. Watch List
The next thing AMS can do is to put a device on
the Watch List.
For example, take the classic paper jam.
The Watch List is unique in that most customer
environments have multiple people printing to a
network printer.
Imagine there are five people associated with a
particular device. And over a couple of days,
each of those five people experiences a paper
jam—but no one places a service call for repairs.
With AMS, each paper jam is
recorded. Because of the first paper
jam, the device is put on the Watch
List. On the third instance of error,
AMS automatically creates a ticket so
that anyone can investigate the paper
path issues within that device.
4. Dashboards
AMS dashboards give us visual displays that
show the performance of specific devices.
For instance, let’s say a customer wants to see
all the devices that are in the “low toner” state.
5. Database (reports)
All alerts go into the AMS database, and those
alerts are used for analytics and statistics.
10
By looking at the dashboard, we
can instantly tell which devices
need servicing; yellow would
highlight a device that had been in
a low toner state for longer than an
hour; red would indicate that a
device had been in a low toner
state for more than three hours.

Here’s a typical scenario
without AMS:
Imagine there’s a maintenance kit alert and the
customer doesn’t replace the maintenance kit.
(The customer didn’t pay attention to the
alarm.)
Eventually, the customer has an image quality
problem.
So the customer calls the service provider and
says, “We have an image quality problem.”
The service provider sends a technician.
The tech will get there at some point in time—
it could be upwards of eight hours.
When the tech arrives on-site, the tech may—
or may not—have the necessary parts on hand
to fix the device right the first time. If the tech
doesn’t fix the device right the first time, the
tech has to go back again—and the device is
still down.
The same scenario
with AMS
With AMS, a service call is created before the
event even happens. Because we’re monitoring
the maintenance kit, we’ve prevented the
image quality from ever getting out of hand
because we already sent the technician out.
In most cases, the only downtime
the customer sees is the actual
repair time—an industry average of
one hour.
• Creates a “closed loop” communication
system, reducing chaos
• Reduces printer support requirements
• Creates service tickets automatically
• Reduces the volume of help desk calls
• Reduces labor, overhead and personnel costs
• Bypasses people and reduces the time
needed to correct problems
• Alerts clients through email
• Improves device availability and customer
productivity through Watch Lists
• Fixes problems the first time—techs arrive
with the right parts
11
Two scenarios:
without AMS and with AMS
alert Management system (aMs):
s u M M a R y
Now that we’ve explored reactive, preventative and
AMS services, are you ready to explore the next evolution
in managed print services . . . Predictive Service?

As soon as a jet engine starts, all kinds of data
are monitored.
By monitoring various types of data, an airline
carrier can optimize the performance of its
jetliners.
On the other hand, if an airplane is sitting on
the ground—needing repairs—that airline
carrier is losing money.
To reduce downtime, airline carriers
leverage predictive technology
If problems are detected that could cause a
component to fail in the very near future,
predictive technology tells the airline
carrier to schedule and dispatch a
maintenance person before the
plane lands.
When the plane lands, the
tech is already at the
gate with the right parts,
making the necessary
component repair proactively—
getting that jetliner back up in the
air as soon as possible.
What is Predictive Service?
Predictive Service takes real-time historical data
along with device information and predicts
when a device component (or something else)
will fail.
Flo-Tech’s extensive service
experience lets us understand
failure rates like:
• On average, how often a particular
make/model will require service
(e.g., every 40,000 pages)
• On average, how long certain assemblies
within a make/model will last (this is
referred to as the assembly’s yield;
e.g., the fuser lasts 90,000 pages)
Knowing these things along with
the service history of a speciﬁc
unit allows Flo-Tech to build a
formulaic approach to
determining when service will
most likely be needed (e.g., the
percent likelihood of failure based on
known failure rates and print volume).
How to Reduce Device Downtime
by 80% (or more)
12
Imagine.
A jet engine component fails at 30,000 feet.
Or a CEO’s printer fails.
Either way, the event is a crisis.
A crisis easily eliminated by using Predictive Service.
Predictive Service also
allows Flo-Tech to dispatch
a service technician to
resolve the issue—before
the device fails.

Here’s a good way to
think about
Predictive Service
The average copier has
anywhere from 100–200
counters in it.
Think of a counter as a gas
gauge.
These gas gauges can
register “full” and “empty.”
Now, take those hundreds of
counters and multiply them by
the number of devices you’re monitoring, and
you’ll get into the tens of thousands quickly;
that’s because you’re looking at so much
information—an impossible task.
What we’re doing with Predictive Service is
looking at all those gas gauges with
computers—not people.
Predictive Service is about
learning patterns
Take a component like the swing plate.
HP doesn’t publish a yield saying the
swing plate needs to be replaced every
million pages, but Predictive Service
discovers that yield over time. That
component is then added to the device’s
profile of what gets replaced.
So this principle can be applied to a
component that doesn’t even have a
counter; that’s because we know from history
that the average swing plate is going to last one
million pages.
Predictive Service then goes to the
next level
We know which inventory items the device
needs, based on the device’s history.
Does it need:
• A fuser?
• A transfer roller?
• A swing plate?
• A combination of components?
Predictive Service is able to look into a
technician’s real-time parts inventory to see if
that tech has the components needed to make
that repair.
So Predictive Service is not creating another
activity—it’s making sure that the tech has all
the right qualifications and parts when arriving
at the customer’s office.
13
Predictive Service can tell when you’re
going to reach empty based on how
much you’re “driving” or, in this case,
how much you’re printing.
In short, Predictive Service gives us detailed
specifics so the device is fixed right—the first time.

Let’s say there are two
identical devices that
have the same model
number with the same
manufacturer-stated yields.
One device is in a law ﬁrm
where they use heavy and
thick paper, which would
wear more heavily on the
device; the other model is
in a human resource
department using regular
copy paper.
Predictive Service has the
intelligence to know that the
device with the heavy paper
will break more often,
because that paper wears
down the components faster
than in the scenario with the
HR department using regular
copy paper.
Over time, Predictive Service sees the
diﬀerences in performance and will
adjust accordingly on an ongoing basis.
Predictive Service in Action
14
Here’s a graph visualizing Predictive Service.

Imagine three users all using one
group printer.
Mary printed to the group printer and had a
jam.
She removed her jam, ﬁnished her job and
walked away without placing a service call. She
didn’t think anything of it because copiers copy,
print and jam.
Joe did the same thing an hour later, and Fred
did the same thing the next day.
No one’s connecting the dots and saying, “Hey,
something’s starting to fail in this device.”
Predictive Service, on the other hand,
knows how many pages a device is
running per day. It knows what
components need to be replaced and
at what intervals.
Predictive Service equates that to how many
days we’re estimating before that component
fails and making sure that the tech notices it
and schedules a service call—prior to the
estimated failure date.
How is Predictive Service
different from AMS?
15
AMS connects those dots, notices a
pattern and generates a service call while
dispatching a technician.

Response time
WITHOuT Predictive Service
You’re in the office.
Your boss says, “I need seven copies collated
and stapled.”
You press print and your device displays an error
code—and you can’t fix it.
So you call the help desk, place a call to the
service provider and wait for your technician to
respond, based on your contract’s SLA (service
level agreement) response time.
We’ll use a typical four-hour response time for
this example.
The device failed at 9:00 a.m., and that’s when
you placed the service call.
The technician arrives at 1:00 p.m.
When the tech arrives, the tech
might—or might not—have the parts
needed to repair the device.
After working on it for one hour, the tech has
fixed the device, and you’re back up and
running.
Your downtime?
Five hours.
Response time
WITH Predictive Service
Looking at the Predictive Service application,
the tech notices that a device has a component
that is likely to fail within the next few days.
The tech then services that device before it
goes down.
The downtime for that device?
One hour.
16
The difference between five
hours’ downtime and one hour
of downtime?
80 percent.

Here are several key benefits that can
be realized when your organization
uses Predictive Service:
• Devices rarely go down without warning
• Downtime is minimized to repair time only
• Emergency calls are avoided
• Devices are fixed the first time the tech
arrives—avoiding unnecessary follow-ups
• Service calls can be group-scheduled based
on location, saving time
• Devices needing service match the
company’s criteria and goals—not what the
tech thinks
• Overall customer involvement is reduced by
(up to) 40 percent
Summary
17
With Predictive Service, your company runs more
efficiently and with fewer disruptions.

We covered a lot of ground in this
Ebook, didn’t we?
We reviewed four managed print
service models:
1. Reactive
2. Preventative
3. Alert Management System
4. Predictive
Conclusion
18
1. We saw how Reactive Service decreases device uptime. That’s because the customer
calls at the moment a device fails. The result? A four-to-six-hour on-site wait time.
2. Preventative Service, the second model, minimizes downtime and disruption to an
organization (and its community). The goal of preventative service is to keep devices
operating at peak performance. It uses activity-based cleaning, which is based on page
volumes, industry thresholds, and Flo-Tech’s knowledge base of the device’s service history.
3. In the third model, Alert Management System (AMS), we discovered how AMS
is the platform for remote monitoring. AMS reacts faster than end users can react, and
predicts some device failures based on error patterns. We also learned that AMS
automatically creates service calls and dispatches a technician, eliminating human
interaction.
4. Finally, we learned how Predictive Service anticipates device failures and prevents
(or signiﬁcantly minimizes) downtime for the customer. For example, we saw how
Predictive Service reduces downtime by 80 percent. We also learned how Predictive
Service monitors thousands of devices and assemblies and individually estimates the days
until the devices reach the point of failure.

Today’s competitive landscape drives
organizations to look for creative ways to reduce
expenses and do more with less.
Flo-Tech is driving innovations in
managed print service (MPS) delivery
that reduce costs, reduce support
requirements and reduce downtime.
Together we can develop the right MPS
implementation strategy for you.
To assess your needs, request a free
(no-obligation) print management consultation
by calling us at 800-213-1112.
Or you can download our
Managed Print services
assessment Process.
Begin learning about our managed print
services assessment process, including the:
1. Assessment and Analysis
2. Discovery Process and Findings
3. Implementation
4. Ongoing Management
The Flo-Tech team is ready to answer your
questions.
Your Next Step
19
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We’re experts at printing, imaging and
document-driven processes—experts with over
20 years of experience assessing, managing,
servicing and supporting printing and imaging
fleets of all sizes and varying levels of
complexity.
Our proven expertise in providing services and
related software solutions can help you
overcome printing challenges and improve
performance, so you can succeed in today’s
competitive landscape.
Because we are pioneers in the managed print
services industry, you can rely on Flo-Tech’s
skills, knowledge and experience to support
your print environment and provide a
comprehensive, strategic approach to making
your business and document processes more
efficient.
Our Managed Print Services include:
• Cost and productivity assessments
• Printing and imaging fleet management and
ongoing optimization with regular
performance reviews
• Automating support and simplifying
processes to reduce administration costs
• Meeting environmental improvement
objectives
• The latest technology solutions and
deployment to enhance information
security, workflow and productivity
• Service level agreements, Predictive Service
and proactive support options to improve
fleet performance
20
Our mission throughout our client relationships is to continually look
for ways to reduce overall expenses and increase productivity.
Why choose Flo-Tech?
Pick a trusted partner, not a Vendor:
Analytical Resource
Comprehensive Enterprise Solutions
Innovative Flexible
High Quality Service: Proactive Predictive
Award-winning, Patented Technology
Flo-Tech Connect: Customer Portal
Flexible Hardware Solutions—Freedom Plan
Cartridge Remanufacturer: 10 patents
About Flo-Tech

A Few of Our Clients
21
contact us:
• CustomerService@flotech.net
• 800-213-1112
• 699 Middle Street, Middletown CT 06457
• www.flotech.net
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