BOSTON, MA, Mar 6, 2025 – PTC has released the ServiceMax AI field service management assistant following successful beta testing and is looking to roll it out immediately across existing and new customers.
With years of hands-on experience and the latest GenAI technology, the solution helps organizations update their workflows and enhance the technician’s experience. It uses the historical data of a field asset stored in the ServiceMax platform. This includes equipment details, service records, and known solutions, allowing teams to accomplish more in less time.
Technicians can use the easy-to-use AI chat function to answer questions about a specific job or asset, automate manual documentation and scheduling tasks, and review proactive recommendations for predictive maintenance.
“When ChatGPT debuted and generative AI took off, we were brainstorming new ways for ServiceMax to help with knowledge transfer from retiring field service technicians. It’s one of the top challenges our customers face, and traditional methods like manuals and databases weren’t cutting it,” explained Joseph June, general manager of ServiceMax.
“So, the use of large language models to train a system on a data set was eye opening. We knew right away this approach could work.”
He continued: “Fast forward several months and a customer beta program later, and we’re bringing you ServiceMax AI. It has access to all the data stored in a ServiceMax instance, engages with technicians through natural language and a simple chat interface, and completes tasks through specialized agents.”
“Our goal was to create an experience that feels like you’re working alongside another human technician, dispatcher, or operator. They can type or ask a question, and the system goes to work with the agents behind the scenes.”
PTC focused on three agents to start; ‘Work History’ that understands work orders, replaced parts, and service history, ‘Scheduling’ that manages scheduling, upcoming appointments, and modifications and ‘Knowledge Access’, the latter retrieving information from PDFs, manuals and unstructured documents. The thrill happens when the agents work together. ServiceMax AI chooses the appropriate agents to respond to questions. This is similar to how a skilled technician draws on their experience and knowledge to solve a problem.
What really sets this apart is how the agents work together behind the scenes, supported by today’s AI techniques, like retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Joseph went on to add: “We built an entire orchestration and reasoning layer that uses RAG to interact with agents to get the answers it needs to provide a response to the overall question.”
“Traditionally, software accesses data in a deterministic way – using predefined APIs that only work for specific queries. This rigid approach can be limiting when the question is unexpected or nuanced.” He continued, “So, we built ServiceMax AI to be able to access data in a non-deterministic way. This means the AI doesn’t rely on rigid API structures.”
He concluded: “Instead of predefining every possible method for retrieving data, we’ve ‘taught’ the system how to access and retrieve information dynamically within ServiceMax. It mimics human thought processes, recalling experiences, analysing context, and providing insightful answers in real-time.”
About PTC
PTC Inc., founded in 1985 and headquartered in Boston, MA, is a software company specializing in product lifecycle management (PLM), CAD, augmented reality (AR), and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. Serving industries such as aerospace, automotive, electronics, and industrial equipment, PTC’s technologies are utilized by 95% of Fortune 500 discrete manufacturing companies. As of September 30, 2024, PTC Inc. supports more than 30,000 customers globally. As of February 10, 2025, the company has a market capitalization of $20.3 billion. PTC employs around 7,500 people globally.
