Manage Warranty Service Standards

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Outline how to model product families, products, and assets in Manufacturing Cloud.
• Describe code sets and how a warranty process uses them.
• Define product fault codes and product labor codes.
• Explain how warranty admins can associate fault codes with labor codes.

Meet the Family of Products

Rayler Parts holds a truckload of information about its product offerings. This includes distinct types of products it manufactures, groups of related products, products it sells to customers, and competitors’ products. It uses this product information for assigning warranty terms to products, creating service standards, and submitting claims. 

Rich product data is critical for establishing service standards, but it can be difficult to manage at scale. So, before getting into service standards management, Cindy gives Abhijeet a refresher on how product data is stored in Manufacturing Cloud. 

Manufacturing Cloud comes with a flexible, robust data model to store product information. Here’s how you can capture different types of product information in Salesforce.

Rayler’s sales and service managers create a Product record for each product that they sell. Here are Product records for two products.

Let’s look at the Forklift Ultra product record.

We’ll discuss the Asset records that Rayler creates later in the module.

Codify Your Service Standards

Now that we’re up to speed on how product information is stored, let’s review the steps warranty admins take in the service standards management stage.

1. Define a service standard using code sets.
2. Create product fault codes and product labor codes.
3. Associate code sets with each other using codeset relationships.

Let’s follow Cindy as she walks Abhijeet through each step.

Define Code Sets

Manufacturers strive to maintain and use service standards consistently across their service operations. Rayler Parts too has an existing set of service standards, but Abhijeet wants to make it more functional and deeply integrated with the warranty process.

Cindy tells Abhijeet that Warranty Lifecycle Management allows warranty admins to establish a comprehensive set of service standards using code sets. A code set is a standardized definition of typical product faults, labor services, and expenses. Warranty admins can use code sets to standardize and categorize service operations. Code sets help avoid confusion for warranty teams defining warranty rules and investigating defective assets.

Code sets are stored as Code Set records, with details such as their source system and type. To help Abhijeet logically group related code sets, Cindy has already defined some Code Set Type picklist values. Since it takes time to transfer all legacy codes to Manufacturing Cloud, Abhijeet starts by migrating a few important code sets. 

Here are the Code Set records he creates.

Here’s the Overheating Engine code set record.

While Abhijeet can create code sets manually, it’s easier for admins to import code sets from external source systems using import applications such as Salesforce Data Loader.

Create Product Fault and Labor Codes

Cindy tells Abhijeet that he can introduce greater granularity in how service standards are defined. Code sets can even be linked to relevant products or product families. Here’s how.

• Create Product Fault Code records to associate a fault code with a product or a product family.
• Create Product Labor Code records to associate a labor code with a product or a product family, and then specify the estimated hours of effort.

Warranty admins can use these codes to catalog labor services, extend or restrict warranty coverages, and identify the exact fault in an asset.

To understand this function better, Abhijeet creates the following Product Fault Code and Product Labor Code records.

Here’s the Overheating Engine product fault code.

Next, Abhijeet creates these Product Labor Code records.

This screen shows the Product Labor Code record that associates the Palette Conveyor Belt Mini product with the Speed Sensor Recalibration labor code.

Well-maintained product fault and labor codes make it easier for claim adjudicators to examine defects and labor services for defective assets, too.

Associate Product Fault Codes with Labor Codes

Abhijeet mulls over another issue. Rayler’s warranty team is bewildered by the sheer diversity of product faults they deal with every day and the combination of services they must perform to correct product faults. They often forget the appropriate labor services and part replacements that specific product faults require.

For example, to fix an overheating forklift engine, a distributor ships the defective forklift to its service center, replaces the engine’s piston, and cleans the engine’s oil filter. The warranty team must account for the expense of these services when they adjudicate claims.

Abhijeet spells this problem out to Cindy, who, without skipping a beat, turns to her notes on codeset relationships. Codeset relationships are a simple way to relate one code set with another. She tells Abhijeet that he can associate fault codes with labor codes.

Eager to test this out, Abhijeet creates the following Codeset Relationship records.

Take a look at the Codeset Relationship record that associates the Overheating Engine code set with the Oil Filter Cleaning code set.

Now that Abhijeet has the swing of establishing warranty service codes, he's ready to take on warranty administration in the next unit.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Manage Warranties and Service Standards for Your Products and Assets