Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-21
2003-06-10
Trammell, James P. (Department: 3621)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
C707S793000, C707S793000, C705S007380
Reexamination Certificate
active
06578001
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a system and method of reducing allocated vehicle warranty costs from a stored historical repair database containing information related to repair areas, repair costs, and repair descriptions.
BACKGROUND ART
Automotive manufacturers maintain allocated or unexpended warranty reserves which hold an amount of allocated reserves for manufactured vehicles during a predetermined time period or mile usage in which the vehicles are warrantied. An unexpended warranty covers repairs involving labor costs and part costs of a warrantied vehicle. One purpose of the unexpended warranty reserve is to provide the customers with adequate service and parts during the predetermined time period or mileage usage without charging the customer. Such unexpended warranty reserves include enormous amounts of money. Such reserves may amount to millions or billions of dollars annually.
The amount of the unexpended vehicle warranty for vehicle models is annually determined by considering historical costs of warrantied services and parts of previous respective vehicle models. The amount of the unexpended vehicle warranty for a given year is directly affected by the historical costs of previous vehicle models. Thus, reducing the costs of warrantied services and parts reduces the amount of a subsequent unexpended vehicle warranty to be allocated.
As historical repair information significantly affects the allocations made toward subsequent unexpended warranties, improvements made on such repairs would also significantly affect the allocations thereof.
Thus, what is needed is an improved method of reducing vehicle warranty costs from historical repair information in order to reduce an unexpended warranty reserve.
What is also needed is an improved method of reducing money allocated for warranty reserves.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
A specific object of the invention is to provide for an improved method of reducing allocated vehicle warranty costs from a stored historical repair database containing information related to repair areas, repair descriptions, and repair costs. The method includes downloading the information into a computer-based program from the database and ranking the information by repair cost. The method further includes sorting the information by repair area to define repair area groups having repairs ranked by cost. The method further includes identifying within each group of repair areas those repair descriptions having a relatively high cost within each respective group so that work to be performed on the repairs may be prioritized in accordance with the ranking in order to reduce the warranty costs.
Another specific object of the invention is to provide for an improved method of reducing allocated vehicle warranty costs from a stored historical repair database containing information related to repair areas, repair descriptions, and repair costs. The method includes downloading the information into a computer-based program from the database and sorting the information by repair area to define groups of repair areas. The method further includes ranking by repair costs those repair descriptions within each repair area group and identifying within each group of repair areas those repair descriptions having relatively high costs within each respective group so that work to be performed on the repairs may be prioritized in accordance with the ranking in order to reduce the warranty cost.
Yet another specific object of the invention is to provide an improved system for reducing allocated vehicle warranty costs from a stored historical repair database containing information related to repair areas, repair descriptions, and repair costs. The system comprises a mechanism for downloading the information into a computer-based program from the database, a mechanism for ranking the information by repair cost, and a mechanism for sorting the ranked information by repair area to define groups of repair areas having repairs ranked by cost. The system further includes a mechanism for identifying within each group of repair area those repair descriptions having relatively high costs within each respective group so that work to be performed on the repairs may be prioritized in accordance with the ranking to reduce the warranty costs.
Determining the repairs that result in relatively high costs and reducing such costs results in a significant reduction of money allocated in unexpended warranties. Aimed toward a multiplicity of repairs having relatively high costs, the unexpended warranty reserve is significantly reduced, resulting in increased efficiency.
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Deierlein, Warranty Recovery: An Economic Necessity, Jun. 1997, Fleet Equipment v23n6, pp. 60-63.
Ford Motor Company
McKenzie F. G.
Trammell James P.
Wang Mary
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