Feature : Maintenance services Feature : Maintenance services

 

We are taking on the challenge of building an unprecedented maintenance services platform that delivers high added value on a consistent basis worldwide. In so doing, we intend to keep offering service features that people expect from Advantest brand products while helping our customers　 further boost productivity.

 

In the wake of our integration with the former Verigy Ltd., Advantest is setting out to build a service platform that delivers high added value, thereby introducing new service structures promising global consistency and contributing to higher levels of customer productivity.

We embarked on this endeavor in April 2012, with our launch of a global task force within the Field Service Group. Since that time, the task force has been working out cohesive rules and in-house procedures pertaining to our global maintenance services, while also setting up consistent worldwide price structures and maintenance policies. Going forward, the task force will set up an operational infrastructure for rendering these services, tailored to the needs and circumstances of markets in respective countries, yet performed on the basis of unified global standards.

Meanwhile, under our company-wide ACT2014 initiative we have set a goal of becoming the industry leader in the business of servicing semiconductor test systems, and are accordingly pursuing an aggressive services strategy that involves efforts spearheaded by our global task force to form close alliances with worldwide entities affiliated with such services.

We have beefed up the marketing capabilities of the Field Service Group, and painstakingly surveyed worldwide customer needs for maintenance services. Now, we are working toward drawing up and implementing maintenance services strategies that reflect such needs, optimally geared toward individual service segments in the memory field, the system on a chip (SoC) field, and the LCD, image sensor and other specialized applications field.

We are stepping out beyond the traditional mode of providing after-the-fact repair services in the realm of breakdown maintenance, and are instead actively developing total support services for test systems designed to help customers increase testing productivity. More specifically, we are now developing and offering diagnostic services along with new software packages and tools that enable customers to avert equipment failure. We have also improved our maintenance services for test handlers, other such peripheral devices, and other forms of equipment. These initiatives are enabling us to provide better customer support that helps our customers realize productivity gains.

 

Global Operations

 

We have upgraded our Business Continuity Plan, drafted to provide guidance for keeping our operations running should a disaster strike. If a violent earthquake were to occur, for instance, damage to the measuring terminals of measurement units could leave a factory without the capacity to take measurements, even if its semiconductor test systems were undamaged. With the aim of preventing such a scenario, Advantest worked with customer-based disaster-protection systems in developing technology that enables such measuring terminals to be removed from harm’s way should an earthquake exceeding a certain intensity occur.
With that recently-developed technology installed in customer equipment now in operation, we plan to offer new services whereby we provide customer support to ensure ongoing operations by minimizing equipment downtimeresulting from seismic activity.
We have also developed a commercial venture involving services for system migration. In this area, we help customers who have been using legacy products make a smooth and speedy transition to the latest inspection systems by enabling them, when at all possible, to continue using software packages and other such tools with the new devices.

These sorts of innovative service solutions are enabling Advantest to expand its operations in the services realm, and to build relationships with its customers that deliver win-win outcomes on both sides.

Customer support services