One of the UK’s leading digital transformation specialists is leveraging the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver a boost to field service technicians.
PTC has released the ServiceMax AI field service management assistant following successful beta testing and is now looking to roll it out immediately across existing and new customers.
Based on decades of field service expertise and the latest GenAI technology, it enables organisations to modernise their workflows and improve the technician experience.
It taps into the history of a field asset stored in the ServiceMax® platform, including equipment data, service history, and known service resolutions, to help get more done in less time.
Technicians can use the easy-to-use AI chat function to answer questions about a specific job or asset, automate manual documentation and scheduling tasks, and review proactive recommendations for predictive maintenance.
“When ChatGPT debuted and generative AI took off, we were brainstorming new ways for ServiceMax to help with knowledge transfer from retiring field service technicians. It’s one of the top challenges our customers face, and traditional methods like manuals and databases weren’t cutting it,” explained Joseph June, General Manager of ServiceMax.
“So, the use of large language models to train a system on a data set was eye opening. We knew right away this approach could work.”
He continued: “Fast forward several months and a customer beta programme later, and we’re bringing you ServiceMax AI. It has access to all the data stored in a ServiceMax instance, engages with technicians through natural language and a simple chat interface, and completes tasks through specialised agents.
“Our goal was to create an experience that feels like you’re working alongside another human technician, dispatcher, or operator. They can type or ask a question, and the system goes to work with the agents behind the scenes.”
PTC focused on three agents to start; ‘Work History’ that understands work orders, replaced parts, and service history, ‘Scheduling’ that manages scheduling, upcoming appointments, and modifications and ‘Knowledge Access’, the latter retrieving information from PDFs, manuals and unstructured documents.
The magic happens when these agents are combined, with ServiceMax AI dynamically selecting the most relevant agents to answer a given question, just as an experienced technician might tap into their memory and knowledge to troubleshoot an issue.
What really sets this apart is how the agents work together behind the scenes, supported by today’s AI techniques, like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Joseph went on to add: “We built an entire orchestration and reasoning layer that uses RAG to interact with agents to get the answers it needs to provide a response to the overall question.
“Traditionally, software accesses data in a deterministic way – using predefined APIs that only work for specific queries. This rigid approach can be limiting when the question is unexpected or nuanced.
“So, we built ServiceMax AI to be able to access data in a non-deterministic way. This means the AI doesn’t rely on rigid API structures.”
He concluded: “Instead of predefining every possible method for retrieving data, we’ve ‘taught’ the system how to access and retrieve information dynamically within ServiceMax. It mimics human thought processes…recalling experiences, analysing context, and providing insightful answers in real-time.”
With AI advancing rapidly, PTC is investing heavily in refining and improving ServiceMax AI based on real-world ‘in the field’ feedback.
For further information, please visit www.ptc.com
