What follows is something service managers in mechanical engineering know well
The technician arrives on time. The part isn't there. The customer waits.
Apologies to the customer. An emergency order with an express surcharge. Scheduling coordination for the second visit. Filling out an internal error report. And the conversation with the customer that leaves an uncomfortable aftertaste for days afterward.
The damage is greater than the cost of the missing part. It is greater than the cost of the second visit. It adds up from dozens of invisible line items, and it begins the moment the technician closes his toolbox without having repaired the system.
What does a second visit really cost?
A second visit in field service doesn't just cost travel and labor, it generates downstream costs across four dimensions: direct deployment costs, production downtime at the customer's site, reputational damage, and lost revenue from tied-up technician capacity.
The direct costs are still the easiest to quantify. According to PTC / ServiceMax, an incomplete first visit generates an average of 1.6 follow-up visits, each at an average cost of $200 to $300 per truck roll (PTC, "What is First-Time Fix Rate," 2024).
Add to that the customer's downtime. According to the study "Value of Reliability" (ABB / Sapio Research, July 2023, n = 3,215), an unplanned machine stoppage costs German industrial companies an average of €147,000 per hour. Every hour that passes between the first visit and the second is charged directly to the manufacturer's account — in the customer's perception.
The third cost factor is harder to measure, but no less real: customer trust. What a service technician leaves behind when he departs without a result is not just a bad feeling — it is a concrete evaluation criterion for the customer's next machine purchase.
What is the First-Time Fix Rate, and what does it reveal about your spare parts planning?
The First-Time Fix Rate (FTFR) is the share of service calls in which the technician fully resolves the issue on the first visit — without a second trip, without a reorder, without delay.
It is one of the most meaningful KPIs in field service. Not because it measures technician competence, but because it reflects the interplay of diagnosis, dispatching, and spare parts availability.
The industry average sits between 70 and 80% (Aquant, "Service Intelligence Benchmark Report," 2022, n > 6 million work orders). Best-in-class organizations in mechanical engineering achieve 85% and above.
The flip side of this: in every third to fifth service call, the problem is not resolved on the first visit. And the most common reason is not a technical failure, it is missing or incorrect spare parts. This has a direct impact on customer satisfaction and service costs.
Anyone who knows their FTFR and wants to improve it must first answer the question: How does the technician know before the call what he needs and is it actually available when he needs it?
The three most common causes of missing parts during a service call
Missing spare parts on a job rarely happen by chance. They arise from structural gaps in planning:
How can spare parts supply in field service be systematically improved?
Spare parts supply in field service improves when consumption data from past service calls is systematically used to generate proactive reorder recommendations rather than reacting to shortages after the fact.
In practice, this means:
What is a good First-Time Fix Rate in mechanical engineering?
In mechanical engineering, a First-Time Fix Rate of 85% or higher is considered excellent. The industry average is 70–80%. Companies below 70% have a structural need for action.
The decisive lever for improving the FTFR is not technician training, it is spare parts availability. According to PTC, best-in-class field service organizations can achieve a FTFR of 88% and above when the right parts are available for the right job.
This requires that planning does not begin at the time of the service call, but weeks in advance.
Conclusion
The problem doesn't start with the technician, it starts in planning
When a service technician arrives on site and the part is missing, that is not an operational coincidence. It is the visible result of a planning gap that developed weeks earlier.
The technician is not at fault. Planning is.
Companies that want to sustainably improve their First-Time Fix Rate don't need better technicians. They need a system that recognizes in time which parts will be needed and ensures they are there.
Would you like to know where gaps are appearing in your spare parts planning today?
In a free 30-minute check, we analyze your current planning situation and show you which parts represent your greatest risk right now.