Contract management using cause-effect clues in service worksheets

Sophisticated equipment often needs intensive technical resources to maintain its system availability. Service contracts can be an easy channel to outside technical resources. Usually, a service contract purchaser only sees its cost instead of its maintenance quality. A system's needs, however, depend on the trade-off between the cost paid and the quality received. If a clinical engineer can actively interpret and integrate the cause-effect consequences on the compiled service worksheets, those clues can serve as a criterion to justify the quality and the cost-effectiveness of a service contract. Through the analysis of the service labor consumed, the justification of the parts replaced, and the assessment of the "fit" to system availability, this paper provides a cost-effective tool for equipment management.