Designing system availability into the service quality of automated facilities

Automation of service facilities is increasingly being adopted by service organizations in order to provide a prompt, quality service to their customers. Automation enables service organizations to respond swiftly to the dynamic changes in demand. It provides the needed flexibility, and the capacity to handle orders which may otherwise not be timely completed by the human labour force. In many cases, automation is used in conjunction with labour to provide needed services. For many service organizations, automation has led to improved productivity and quality. However, with automation comes the problems of reliability, maintainability and availability often referred to as RMA....