Our processes our structured to make it compulsory that every piece of equipment on a loan, sale or rental is checked before it ships, and returning from loan or rental is checked again. These checks cannot be skipped around, they are genuinely compulsory.

The major check is when equipment RETURNS from loan ….. clearing off any loan customer’s information  left on it, dealing with any signs of wear and tear, and restoring the machine back to an as new condition. The check BEFORE equipment ships is primarily to deal with any integration of memory and accessories, for printers checking consumable levels, and checking paper paths for loans that require a printer plus paper handing devices. 

The engineering activity we do is all focussed at achieving the set-up that the manufacturer requires for their equipment. Generally that is to make sure that the equipment is ‘as new’, eg with a fresh clean image for every computing device… but then there may be a requirement to update firmware, or load a special image. Every piece of equipment has a testing plan defined. 

In addition to testing out the functionality of the equipment we are of course checking that units are complete, and that packaging is as good as possible. For large bulky products it’s a frequent request that when delivered the product is unboxed and the packaging is taken away….. part of the engineering check is to repackage the unit. 

We have a Bench engineering team in each of our Operational Centres and a team of Driver / Engineers capable of doing some set-up support on-site. 

Within our main Addems system there are a range of tools to help the Engineering check process. There is a ‘view’ that shows all the outgoing equipment, allowing engineers to select equipment for checking in an efficient way, and to make sure there is constant visibility of what needs to be cleared before the end of the working day, and before the carriers come in to take equipment away to be delivered. Each check is reported on our system so that we know which engineer checked every machine, on each occasion. There is a process for attaching information like a pdf of a config page to the system record using Scan to email as filing system, there is a process for reporting any issues, in a way that is instantly visible to the Loan Account management team, and there is a process for putting equipment on ‘Problem! Status’ which means that it cannot be shipped until the issues identified are resolved.