Industry 4.0 and the costs to avoid in your aftermarket

This is about industry 4.0 and the life of innovative machine manufacturers and their aftermarket. 

What are the golden eggs in your aftermarket?

A machine manufacturer, who has built up a well-functioning aftermarket can count on a steady income flow for a long time to come. On top of that, they have better margins and a reduced economic vulnerability during recessions. A great example of this is Tetra Pak, whose machine sales are primarily to be able to sell their packaging and consumables. During times of economic turmoil, investment in machinery may decline, while sales of milk and yogurt will always be stable.

Even in less obvious examples, the aftermarket and its additional sales should be more profitable. No one other than the original machine manufacturer will know more about the customer, its needs, and machinery. This makes it a good deal to be able to offer service, spare parts, and consumables yourself. It’s also an excellent indicator for the seller to know when it is time to sell a new machine. With a continuous and reliable margin, it becomes less risky to keep having high research ambitions. This, in turn, provides a long-term sustainable pace for product development and leads to you keeping the lead in technology and innovation.

What are the risks for the machine manufacturer in the aftermarket?

In real life, it is neither as simple nor obvious how to succeed. Most probably there are competitors without scruples who want to steal your aftermarket and new sales to your customers. A variety of external factors such as geography, wages, taxes, import duties, etc. can also nibble on your profit. However, the most common reasons for a less successful aftermarket often lie in your own processes, in the internal communication, or the communication with the customer. That’s also where industry 4.0 can help you out. 

Wrong orders and incorrect deliveries will cost you

You probably have someone in your factory and/or out working at the customer who has been with you for a long time. That person knows all the ins and outs when it comes to the machines and their history. Even if this person is available, there can still be great uncertainty about what kind of spare part to order or deliver.  Errors made during handling of spare parts cost you a lot, both through unnecessary production stops, the extra administration, but also in shipping and more.

Suboptimal storage of spare parts will cost a lot to machine manufacturers

It’s not easy to manage a storage of spare parts. Too many spare parts in stock will look your capital and have direct costs, such as costs for premises, storage systems and even doing the inventories take longer time. Too few spare parts in stock cost money and customer relations, but will also cost through more expensive handling of, for example, express orders from the machine manufacturer’s own suppliers.

Attacks from “patent-trolls” and spare part pirates will cost you

There are companies building their entire business on monitoring when different patents expire. The pharmaceutical industry is an extreme example of this. After fifteen years of research, clinical studies, regulatory approvals, on average one in three medicines or substances is approved. In the next ten years you will market and present the product to an entire medical profession. When a total of 25 years has passed, the recipes are free to copy for those who want.

If the copy puts its price 10% below the original, then pharmacies in many countries must recommend the cheaper product and it’s perfectly legal. Tetra Pak’s patents for a couple of their best-selling packaging materials will soon expire. Then the price is not what you want to use fighting the new competitors. One must fight with innovation, first-class service, guarantees, and world-class user experiences. They can no longer just sell machines and processed paper, they must sell themselves as a whole and as part of the flow of the customer’s production. If the customer processes are digitalized, the machines must also be an integrated part of these.

This is something that can be difficult for competitors to offer. For a machine manufacturer, there are also many pirates on the market. They sell knock-offs of components and spare parts without even waiting for patents to expire. To stop it a machine manufacturer may require original parts to be used for warranties to apply. Apart from that, there are no measurements the machine manufacturer can take against pirate parts before the damage has occurred or a service inspection has been performed.

Cumbersome handling of purchase orders costs

There are very different routines for how orders and purchases are made. You can decentralize it and make an operator responsible for making certain purchases. You can also centralize the process and make sure purchases are approved at one or more levels above the operator. Regardless of the process, this type of purchase requires an operator or maintenance manager to take the time to communicate with someone by phone, email, or have a license to order via the business system. It sometimes happens that you do not have time, or forget what you need to do.

This is not the fault of the machine manufacturer, but there is a risk that an electrical fault, the break in usage, and the downtime instead are said to be due to the poor quality of the cable. On the other hand, it partly is the machine manufacturer’s fault if the customer contacts a competitor because the reception of the order had a too long waiting time or the website was too complicated to find the right spare part.

A service agreement is costly

There are many machine manufacturers who find it difficult to sell the right type of service agreements a customer need to avoid unnecessary machine errors. No wonder many of these customers think it will be cheaper to act only when shit hits the fan. What’s the reason for this? Service intervals simply cannot be based on the average or median value of the risk of something happening. The interval must be based on a significantly lower risk. The fact that only 5% of the machines’ ball bearings sees the end already after a year or 3000 hours in operation may be a valid reason to always change bearings at this interval. However, mathematically it’s 95% probability that this is unnecessary.

So how do you as a machine manufacturer use industry 4.0 to your advantage and nurture your aftermarket?

The very foundation of being successful in your aftermarket is to own the history of your machines and keep a close eye on them. If you succeed in doing that, all other features will be much easier to implement. The reverse is also true. For example, the benefit of having a new module in a business system is never more important than the quality and reliability of the data it should handle. It does not matter that the reports are good-looking if the numbers are not reliable.

There are a few different systems that can keep track of machines and their components at an overall product level. PIM is perhaps the most common term and is an abbreviation of Product Information Management. A modern PIM system should also be able to handle different versions of documents and other media associated with the product. If there are also CAD tools in the solution, the system acronym will instead be PDM, Product Data Management.

PLM tool

If you want to keep track of exactly where each unique machine is and has been you need a facility register. These systems are called EAM, Enterprise Asset Management. A PLM tool, Product Lifecycle Management, follows a product series or machine type from the time it is conceived, designed, developed, tested, produced, marketed, sold until it is discontinued. This connects many different roles in an organization such as R&D, production, sales, and service that share information.

A PLM tool is usually very powerful and has extensive functionality. SAP, ORACLE, PTC, Siemens Teamcenter, and Upchain PLM are some of the largest suppliers. It is no wonder that Boeing, BMW, Tetra Pak, and other really big companies have put many years and millions into implementing and integrating this type of tool to manage the aftermarket of their machines. But, what should then a machine manufacturer with limited resources in time and money do?

In our upcoming articles about industry 4.0, the aftermarket for machine manufacturers and OEM, we will continue to go through the most common obstacles that many encounters. The working methods, processes, and system support common in the industry today. What stands between these and the digitalized flow many are talking about,  but few experience. We will guide you on how to look at these flows, how to start changing and improving. That there will be a lot of unnecessary work if you do not capture the end customers. Today, we focused on business flows across company borders. In the next article, we will focus on the internal workflow. In other words, where change needs to begin. So you will know how to lay your own golden eggs without a magic hen.

The series of articles about innovative machine manufacturers and their place in the aftermarket so far:

1. Industry 4.0 and the costs to avoid in your aftermarket (this one)
2. Why the system support is deficient when it comes to the aftermarket
3. IOT factory automation for increased aftermarket sales
    
4. How your aftermarket benefits from a data-driven service book
5. How to increase sales in your aftermarket with industrial IOT services
6. Oee and how to develop your features in the right order
7. (Subscribe)