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Copperberg’s Thomas Igou outlines the four key technologies that he believes are going to be shaping the future of the aftermarket in the coming years...

Experts from Accenture, Daimler Trucks North America, Spartan Motors, Carlisle & Company, Bocconi University and Syncron share strategies to succeed in the years ahead...

To help manufacturers navigate one of the most transformative times in history, Syncron^TM, a provider of cloud-based after-sales service solutions focused on empowering the world’s leading manufacturers to maximise product uptime and deliver exceptional customer experiences, today published “2019 After-sales Service Predictions: Powering the Journey to Servitization Through Maximized Product Uptime.” Service experts from Accenture, Daimler Trucks North America, Spartan Motors, Carlisle & Company, Bocconi University and Syncron shared insights on the time, resources and technology manufacturers will need to win in 2019 and beyond. 

Servitisation – where organisations transition from selling one-off products to selling the outcome or value those products deliver – is leading manufacturers to evolve their after-sales service operations from reactive, break-fix models focused on repair execution, to a new paradigm focused on dynamic repair prevention and maximising product uptime. In this new white paper, Syncron unveils how manufacturers can succeed in this shift to servitisation. 

“In this new era of servitisation, the responsibility for ensuring maximised product uptime is shifting from the end-user to the manufacturer,” said Gary Brooks, CMO at Syncron. “This new business model will require manufacturers to find ways to increase cost efficiencies throughout the entire value chain, ultimately driving them to completely transform business logic, company cultures and product development strategies. Today’s global manufacturers are at a pivotal point in their storied histories, and those that adapt to the changing climate will be the ones to come out on top.”

The key predictions included in the white paper include: 

1. The time for manufacturers to begin shifting to servitisation is now
2. Manufacturers must intelligently allocate the resources behind an evolving industry
3. Adopting the right technology is crucial to making servitisation a reality

In addition, the white paper includes a foreword by Syncron CEO, Anders Grudén, plus further details about the future of after-sales service and immediate next steps for manufacturers to take as they begin 2019.

“We interviewed multiple industry experts – the best-of-the-best around the globe, to compile this expert advice,” continued Brooks. “This white paper will serve as an ultimate guide for manufacturers to establish business plans for not only 2019, but also several years down the road.”

Key contributors to “2019 After-sales Service Predictions: Powering the Journey to Servitization Through Maximized Product Uptime” include: Kurt Ranka, Principle Director, Accenture; Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffè, Professor of Strategy, Bocconi University; Nate Chenenko, Manager, Carlisle & Company; Jay Johnson, General Manager, Daimler Trucks North America; Jon Dickinson, Director of Aftermarket Sales, Spartan Motors; Anders Grudén, Chief Executive Officer, Syncron and Gary Brooks, Chief Marketing Officer, Syncron.

Click here to read “2019 After-sales Service Predictions: Powering the Journey to Servitization Through Maximized Product Uptime” in its entirety. To learn more about Syncron and its suite of after-sales service solutions, visit syncron.com.

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In the third from our series of articles looking at the key speakers at this year's Aftermarket business conference, Copperberg's Mark McCord reflects on an exciting presentation given by Mika Karaila, Valmet on the potential of Augmented Reality in field service delivery...

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The schedule for Aftermarket 2019 is already being put together and it promises to be a key date in the calendar once again. This is an event that almost always sells out so head over to aftermarketeurope.com now and secure your place at this important industry event...

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Maintenance technicians are busy feeling their way around a new power station in northern Finland – even though the plant hasn’t been built yet.

They’re part of a team that’s breaking new ground with augmented reality (AR) technology, working within a virtual model of the facility, even “walking” its rooms and machinery two years before it’s completed.

In this digital environment the technicians are familiarising themselves with the Oulu Energy Co power station’s layout and using the platform to make alterations to its design before construction begins next year.

 

"It means there are no delays and there is no downtime when the plant eventually opens, the engineers will know every centimetre of it when it’s open..."

 

“It means there are no delays and there is no downtime when the plant eventually opens, the engineers will know every centimetre of it when it’s open,” explained Mika Karaila, research director at Valmet, the Finnish services and automation firm that’s developing the power station and which created the software for them. “They are designing everything there.”

Karaila is a leading expert in the application of AR, and its cousins virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) to maintenance and support services, a subject he elaborated on in detail at Aftermarket 2018. He foresees a future in which crucial training and maintenance will be carried out remotely and virtually.

“The technology is there already and we are using it,” he said.

For more than 30 years, Karaila has been developing and putting into operation distributed control systems and integrated controls systems, and has more recently turned to artificial intelligence and visual technologies.

In his presentation, Karaila donned a pair of high-tech digital glasses and headset to demonstrate how the Valmet software can add virtual elements to a real-life environment. Via a giant video screen linked to Karaila’s headset, assembled delegates watched a huge paper processing machine materialise in the room. As Karaila walked around, his view of the digitally visualised machine adjusted accordingly.

Still, in its infancy, the technology is being driven mostly by the gaming industry, where players demand increasingly immersive and life-like experiences. But Karaila says AR, MR and VR’s application in industry will grow in sophistication as it becomes more widely adopted.

Its potential for field services and aftermarket services are enormous, he said.

“Facilities that are located many miles away can be monitored remotely,” he explained. “That, we can do now, but in the not too distant future it could be used so that an engineer can be at a facility as a telepresence, guiding the actions of a technician at the facility in repairs and maintenance.”

 

"Eventually, of course, we will be able to use this software in conjunction with robots to perform repair and maintenance tasks remotely..."

 

Lasse Laanikari, head of area customer service management at Liebherr, said the technology would be suitable for his company.

“I see training benefits in this,” Laanikari said. “We have earth movers 3,000 kilometres from our base, which we may see once a year and when we send a technician they may never have seen it before. They may travel there and realise they do not have what they need for the job. So you stay there, wait for someone to ship it over and start again. This could offer expert help in the field when they operators don’t know what to do.”

The Valmet technology enables collaboration between multiple engineers in the same virtual space. In a demonstration, Karaila showed how other team members are represented as simple plain head-and-shoulders avatars. But he said soon the software will be able to project images of those individuals’ faces onto their digital forms.

“Eventually, of course, we will be able to use this software in conjunction with robots to perform repair and maintenance tasks remotely,” Karaila said. “The possibilities are endless.”

Interview Conducted by Mark McCord at Aftermarket Business Platform 2018

 

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This year's Aftermarket Business Platform was once again a hive of information as senior leaders from across the European continent and beyond came together to share their insight, learn from their peers and see first hand the technology that is shaping the sector.

The conference was packed with the leading thinkers within the industry from both the practitioner and solution provider side and in this second in a series of articles with those key speakers Coppperberg's Mark McCord joins reflects on his discussion with Thomas Radau of German firm Titan following his presentation...

 

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The schedule for Aftermarket 2019 is already being put together and it promises to be a key date in the calendar once again. This is an event that almost always sells out so head over to aftermarketeurope.com now and secure your place at this important industry event...

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In a distinguished career in engineering services, Thomas Radau has seen a lot of change. The biggest, however, has been industry’s attitude towards the customer.

No longer just the endpoint in a supply and process chain, manufacturers increasingly see customers as long-term partners.

“There’s been a revolution in thought,” says Radau, service manager for German packaging and strap-making firm Titan.

“In the past, the customer was paid lip service to and customer-focus was more an attitude than a practice. But now it’s key to our business.”

It’s no longer enough simply to offer customers a product, Radau says.

 

"You have to be very focused to say ‘am I understanding you correctly, this is the problem, that’s where I can help you..."

 

“You have to be very focused to say ‘am I understanding you correctly, this is the problem, that’s where I can help you’.”

Radau began his career as a service technician and electronics expert and was posted in various locations around the world. He gained an up-close understanding of the importance of aftermarket service provision while working within the compressed air and gas purification industry, where the smooth running of equipment and minimisation of downtime are critical.

He later moved to DEUTZ, a manufacturer of industrial diesel engines before joining Titan in 2015.

In an engrossing presentation at Aftermarket 2018, Radau stressed the importance of customer focus by personalising his customer base to an idealised character called “Paul”.

“You have to think forward, and ask how do I help Paul meet his projects,” Radau told the delegates in Berlin. “If what we do doesn’t add value to Paul, then it’s useless.”

In an increasingly competitive world, it’s important for companies to put aftermarket services at the forefront because that wins customer loyalty and satisfaction, Radua argues.

“It’s now more difficult to sell things because everybody wants to sell products – it’s difficult to get customers’ attention,” Radau adds. “We must now do things where in the past the customer had to do it themselves.”

While Radau jokes that aftermarket service is like a social service, he believes he is in the business of making life better for his customers.

“We release them from the monkey work – that’s what the product as a service is all about,” he says animatedly. “It’s a lifestyle pitch.”

“In today’s life – everybody has more and more responsibility and everybody is more and more involved in lots of things, so if we are able to ease their lives and save them time and energy, they’re able to do their work better and easier.”

 

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This year's Aftermarket Business Platform was once again a hive of information as senior leaders from across the European continent and beyond came together to share their insight, learn from their peers and see first hand the technology that is shaping the sector. The conference was packed with the leading thinkers within the industry from both the practitioner and solution provider side including regular fieldservicenews.com columnist Mark Brewer who spoke with Coppperberg's Mark McCord...

 

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The schedule for Aftermarket 2019 is already being put together and it promises to be a key date in the calendar once again. This is an event that almost always sells out so head over to aftermarketeurope.com now and secure your place at this important industry event...

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In an outcome-based economy, the customer’s experience becomes the focus of the production process. But if a new product can achieve the same experience as an older model, where does that leave innovation?

According to IFS global industry director for service management Mark Brewer, innovation becomes even more essential, even if it’s driven in different ways.

“Rather than restricting innovation, the manufacturer is induced to continually reflect on how the product is behaving in the field,” Brewer explains on the sideline of Aftermarket 2018. “A combination of both consumers and industry are driving innovation. Organisations are being flexible to adapt to the expectations of millennials, generation X and so forth.”

Brewer has spent his 20-plus year career in presales, product management, business development marketing and he crisscrosses the world representing IFS at trade shows and winning business for the Sweden-based software developer.

 

"Rather than restricting innovation, the manufacturer is induced to continually reflect on how the product is behaving in the field..."

 

While the service industry is undergoing a transformation that’s putting the focus on experiences and outcomes rather than product manufacturing, Brewer says innovation will come in the form of better, more cost-effective, ways to provide those experiences.

Earlier, he explained the concept to dozens of delegates at the Berlin event using the example of Philips. The Dutch electrical giant used to sell tens of thousands of light bulbs to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Now, he explained, it no longer sells bulbs – instead, it provides a contract that will ensure the facility’s lights never go out.

“When you take ownership of the outcome, sure it turns the model on its head but in that example, they want to minimise the amount of product they shift because it’s all coming off the profit margin of their contract,” he explains.

“Likewise they are going to great lengths to optimise the number of visits they make — so they intelligently combine visits. If they’re going to do an overhaul of certain sections of the airport, they pull all the near-term jobs into the same routine and send one team in one hit. It’s a win-win because the customer doesn’t want engineers swapping things out every day.”

In his presentation, Brewer said research showed companies could earn $12 in product servicing contracts for every $1 earned in product sales. BMW, he pointed out, earned 12% margins on the sale of each car but 65% on provision of services for each of those cars.

“Service traditionally has been underinvested,” he told delegates. “That golden goose hasn’t been mined very well – but that’s changing.”

Driving that change is technology, he explains later. “Digital twinning”, in which manufacturers track the performance and condition of their products in the field via inbuilt monitors, has the potential to revolutionise the service industry.

 

"For the first time, the customer is no longer the sensor - the machine is the sensor now..."

 

“For the first time, the customer is no longer the sensor to say, for instance, that an elevator is broken; the machine is the sensor now,” Brewer says. “When a company sends a product out they never lose sight of it.

“With IoT and the leveraging of all their product information in the form of CAD, they can see how their products are performing. More interestingly, they can see the features that customers are using and not using. In that way they can see where they’ve over-engineered the product and can defeature to reduce costs by taking things away.”

The end result is innovation targeted at creating better customer experiences. More and more, that will come in the form of software upgrades.

“It doesn’t mean we have to reflect hardware changes to reflect innovation and change,” he explains. “The Tesla gets its upgrade at the click of a button and GE today employs more software engineers than hardware engineers.”

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In an age of servitization and advanced services, spare parts management has become something of a difficult beast to fully grasp for many companies who are offer aftermarket services.

For example, in a world of guaranteed up-times, the cost of failure to keep an asset running can often far outweigh the lost revenue from the sale of the replacement part needed to get the asset back up and running and fully functional again.

Yet, the path to servitization is not an easy one to tread - so is it worth cannibalising what for many service companies is a reliable, consistent and strong revenue stream in its pursuit?

Whichever route companies ultimately turn to, one thing is certain, spare parts management is going to be a crucial aspect within the service delivery sector and as with mobile workforce management, there are a number of technologies and innovations that are emerging that could change the way we approach parts management in the future.

Therefore it was with great interest that we took a look at the insights from a recent research project undertaken by Copperberg. The research was conducted online across the last month primarily to Copperberg’s own audience of conference delegates.

In total the there were 65 responses to the survey and these representatives were all professionals within the sector ranging in seniority from parts managers through to Managing Directors - although the main body of respondents were at the division head/director level on a national scale.

The majority of respondents were from Europe although other regions, including China, were represented. The respondents were largely from manufacturing verticals, which would be anticipated given Copperberg’s flagship event the Aftermarket Business Platform is also a manufacturing dominated event. However, there were a number verticals within the manufacturing sector represented including heavy machinery, medical and automotive.

So let us take a brief look at what trends the research revealed...

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Want to know more? Click here to Visit Copperberg's website to register for an exclusive white paper based on this research!

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Inventory Management:

Inventory Management sits at the heart of good parts management as without the ability to track components and parts at any given time as they move from depot to the field (and potentially back again depending on a companies approach to repair and reverse logistics) everything else within in the equation becomes open to inaccuracies and subject to guesswork.

Indeed, the importance of inventory management appears to be hugely important within the organisations represented within Copperberg’s research with 91% of the respondents ranking it as being either four, five or six on a scale on to six with six being very important. In fact, almost half of the respondents (43%) listed Inventory Management as very important (6) - further emphasising the significance of inventory management in the context of spare parts management.

So it is absolutely shown to be clear in the research that the focus on inventory management remains one of utmost importance for the vast majority of companies.

 

Parts Pricing and eCommerce:

Parts pricing is also another area that was unanimously outlined as being important to the survey respondents.

This is particularly interesting as the fact that so many companies still view parts pricing as being highly important to them could be viewed as an indicator that the revenue streams that come from spare parts sales is still very much a critical part of the aftermarket landscape.

In fact, 86% of respondents stated that they felt parts pricing was at least a four on the same scale as listed above, however, here it was just under a third of respondents (32%) that felt this issue was very important.

eCommerce is of course another area that is heavily linked with parts pricing and there are indeed some correlations between the two areas, yet in terms of responses, eCommerce remains somewhat less of a priority than pricing.

With regards to eCommerce, exactly two-thirds of the respondents (66%) listed it as a four, five or six with only 16% seeing it as being very important (6).

This is quite an interesting difference between the two as we might have anticipated these results being more closely aligned.

One assumption, however, may be that with regards to eCommerce the solutions have now matured and so most manufacturers in 2018 may have at least some form of eCommerce solution in place - perhaps this explains why it is viewed as less of a priority?

This is certainly though an area for further discussion - something that will be surely had at the Copperberg Spare Parts Business Platforms which are running in Q1 next year.

 

Digitalisation:

Digitalisation is the key buzzword of the last few years although given that it encompasses a number of important shifts within the current evolution of business processes this is perhaps to be expected and there is no denying the importance of digitalisation within the field service sector and it is also a major consideration within the closely related function of parts management as the research reveals.

Digitalisation was ranked was 71% of the respondents to the Copperberg survey as being listed as either a four, five or six on their scale of importance, with 22% of respondents listing it as a six i.e. very important.

This places digitalisation as being deemed to be not quite as important to the respondent base as Inventory Management and Parts Pricing but more important than eCommerce.

What is interesting to note here is that these two very specific niche challenges seem to be in some-ways the eternal, perennial headaches of the sector, whilst broader, business-wide concerns such as digitalisation are possibly more likely to appear as an issue to overcome in the short-term which in themselves could lead to improvements in other areas - such as improved inventory management for example.

Which leads us neatly into...

 

3D Printing & Artificial Intelligence:

Two perfect examples of exciting new technologies that are emerging would be 3D Printing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) - with one set to play a hugely significant role in the niche of spare parts management, whilst the other will play a broad role in almost all sectors, including spare parts management.

So how do the industry experts who made up the Copperberg respondent base see each of these exciting technologies impacting the spare parts management sector?

With regards to AI just over a third of respondents (35% ) thought it would be important to some degree (again listing it as either a four, five or six).

However, less than a tenth of the respondents (9%) felt that AI was currently very important for them.

In terms of 3D printing, surprisingly the numbers were even lower.

In fact, less than a third of companies listed 3D Printing at a four or higher and only 8% of respondents felt that 3D Printing was very important in the sector currently.

 

Parts Logistics:

One area, however, that was overwhelmingly listed as being important within the field of spare parts management across the next 12 months was that of parts logistics.

94% of respondents listed parts logistics as being at least a four in the scale of importance with over a third (35%) going on to state that they felt parts logistics was important enough to warrant being listed as a six.

This makes parts logistics one of the most important areas in the spare parts sector across the next twelve months according to this respondent base, although Inventory Management is very important to more companies.

 

Conclusions:

The results of the survey bring us some interesting conclusions - particularly when we stand them alongside the trends we are seeing from within the field service sector.

Of course, field service and parts management are two leaves on the same branch with deeply symbiotic relationships between the two.

Yet, from this research at least, it does seem that many of the forward-looking discussions we have been having within the field service sector, particularly around emerging technologies such as AI, IoT and Augmented Reality as well as the wider topic of servitization as a strategy for business growth - may be further down the line than their equivalent discussions with our spare parts colleagues - and in some companies that may be significantly so.

Perhaps, part of the reason for this is that parts management is a highly complex beast with a huge amount of moving parts (literally) and even if solutions such as inventory management systems have been put in place it may take time for the benefits there to be truly felt.

However, the simple fact is that no matter how efficient field service management is - it all falls out of the window if parts management is poor - and this is perhaps the greatest learning from the research - that the focus of professionals within the parts management sector currently remains on efficiencies - and for that, we in field service should be hugely grateful.

 

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Want to know more? Click here to Visit Copperberg's website to register for an exclusive white paper based on this research!

 

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