Field Service Glossary
Clear definitions of the terms used in field service management — written for the people who actually run field operations.
Terms · 16 terms
Field Service Management (FSM)
Field service management is the coordination of work carried out away from the office — at a customer site, in a plant, or on the road. It covers scheduling and dispatching technicians, tracking jobs to completion, managing parts and assets, and reporting on the results.
Read definitionWork Order
A work order is the record of a single job to be performed: what needs doing, for which customer, on which asset, by when, and by whom. It carries the job through its whole life — created, assigned, in progress, completed, invoiced.
Read definitionDispatch
Dispatch is the act of assigning a job to a specific technician and sending it to them. It decides who goes where and in what order, balancing skills, availability, location and job priority.
Read definitionPreventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is servicing carried out on a fixed schedule — by time or by usage — to stop equipment failing rather than to repair it after it has failed. Filter changes, inspections and calibrations are typical examples.
Read definitionCorrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance is the work done to restore equipment after a fault has occurred. It is reactive by definition: something has broken, and the job is to diagnose and fix it.
Read definitionService Level Agreement (SLA)
A service level agreement is a documented commitment about service speed and quality — typically a maximum response time and a maximum resolution time for a given priority of job.
Read definitionFirst-Time Fix Rate
First-time fix rate is the percentage of jobs resolved on the first visit, with no return trip needed. It is calculated as jobs closed on the first visit divided by total jobs, over a period.
Read definitionMean Time to Repair (MTTR)
Mean time to repair is the average time taken to restore a failed asset to working order, measured from the moment the fault is reported to the moment service is resumed.
Read definitionMean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
Mean time between failures is the average operating time between one breakdown and the next for a given asset. It is a measure of reliability rather than of repair speed.
Read definitionRoute Optimization
Route optimization is the ordering of a technician's stops so that total driving time or distance is as low as possible, while still respecting appointment windows and job priorities.
Read definitionTechnician Utilization
Technician utilization is the share of a technician's paid hours spent on productive work at the job site, as opposed to travelling, waiting or handling paperwork.
Read definitionDowntime
Downtime is any period during which an asset is not available for its intended use. Planned downtime is scheduled for maintenance; unplanned downtime is caused by failure.
Read definitionCMMS
A CMMS is a computerised maintenance management system: software that holds an asset register, maintenance schedules, work order history and parts inventory for the equipment an organisation owns or services.
Read definitionAsset Registry
An asset registry is the authoritative list of the equipment an organisation owns or services, with each item's identity, location, specifications, warranty status and service history.
Read definitionDigital Form
A digital form is a structured checklist or report completed on a mobile device instead of on paper — capturing answers, photos, measurements and signatures directly against a job.
Read definitionSpare Parts Inventory
Spare parts inventory is the stock of components held for repairs — in a warehouse, in a technician's vehicle, or both — together with the record of what is consumed on each job.
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