Patent ID: 8504445

Claim:
A system for maintaining and servicing machines located at a plurality of customer locations, by service technicians, comprising: a central inventory storing quantities of parts and supplies required to service and maintain said machines; a plurality of service vehicles each having a trunk inventory of parts and/or supplies for the maintenance and service of said machines; a central computer based ERP system operative to maintain records of the parts and supplies constituting the contents of said central inventory and the trunk inventories in each vehicle; machine-readable identification tags attached to the parts and/or supplies contained in the central inventory and each trunk inventory; machine-readable identification tags attached to each of the machines to be serviced; all of the machine-readable identification tags bearing information identifying the parts and/or supplies bearing the identification tags and data which will automatically initiate phone messages to said ERP system when the machine-readable identification tags are read by cellular phones; and cellular phones for use by said service technicians allowing a service technician, visiting a customer location including a machine requiring maintenance and/or service to read the machine-readable identification tag attached to said serviced machine at the beginning and end of a service call to transmit information to said ERP system relative to the time spent on the service call and the parts and/or supplies transferred by the technician from said service technician's vehicle's trunk inventory to said maintained and serviced machine.