Achieving servitization success can be tricky. Richard Fernandes offers five tips to make sure you accomplish your service goals.
This won’t be a surprise to you, but the role of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) has transformed.
Historically, manufacturers would just provide technical advice and specialist repair information while customers took on the responsibility for repair and overhaul (R&O), with R&O often requiring significant investment in skills; facilities; inventory; tooling, and technology.
Today, customers don’t necessarily want to take responsibility for R&O or carry the costs associated with it.
Airlines, for example, want to concentrate on transporting people and freight safely, efficiently and profitably rather than leveraging a capital-intensive asset base.
As a result, customers now want OEMs to take over R&O under service-based contracts. Some are even negotiating ‘availability’ contracts for new equipment – where manufacturers own, manage, maintain and supply their products on a pay-for-usage basis.
The move to servitization
This move to servitization represents a massive shift in the balance of risk and reward for both manufacturers and customers.
These new service-based contracts are turning OEMs into key players throughout the entire product lifespan, but it’s not simple to achieve success, as this new role requires business transformation as much as technical change.
OEMs will have to create new business models.
They will need new infrastructure and capabilities, and new commercial ways of doing business.
What are the first steps?
With this in mind, and harnessing a decade of experience of Atos helping to build these aftermarket capabilities for manufacturers, I believe that there are five key areas OEMs need to address for servitization success:
- How are you going to integrate shop floor planning, scheduling and execution systems that have come from a variety of vendors with ERP and PLM systems, as new build and spares production become re-aligned and harmonised?
- What sort of investment are you going to have to make in new servicing and support facilities; people; skills; tools, and inventory?
- Do you need new customer relationship management (CRM) tools to ensure close engagement with customers?
- How will you implement yield-based commercial models, enabling asset tracking and inventory management?
- How can you move to condition-based maintenance offerings, which are provided when required rather than on a pre-arranged schedule?
Working collaboratively with our clients across the globe, Atos has developed a portfolio of best-practice systems, tools, software and processes that cover the post-sales spectrum of planning, ticketing, execution, and enablement.
Every day we’re helping our manufacturing clients transform their businesses and drive real benefit from the shift to servitization based models.
For more information on Atos’ Manufacturing capability, our global client base and our “Factory of the Future” approach please contact me directly via [email protected]
