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Today, however, agility is seen more than ever as a critical success factor for companies. In times of an increasing degree of digital interconnection and minimum viable products, a mentality is entering the industrial service sector that has so far only been exemplified by Internet companies (e.g. Google): New products and especially digital services are developed in highly iterative processes. To this end, customers are involved in early test phases of development and provide feedback on individual functional modules, which – in contrast to the previous approach – are only gradually assembled into a market-ready “100 percent version”. But especially with the development of new digital services, companies must ensure more than ever that both the existing analog service business and the design of new digital services are geared to effectiveness and efficiency in order to meet the growing demands of customers and competitors.
To achieve this, companies must not only be familiar with the products currently on the market, but also master the entire product history, which in some cases goes back more than 30 years and varies greatly from one industry to another.
The transformation of the service technician into the customer's most important contact person and the company's most important sales channel requires a sustainable change of the entire company. But the effort is worth it. This insight has already reached many companies, but there is often a
lack of a clear idea of how much such a change challenges existing structures. A fundamental change of the company is only possible if all levels and departments recognize the necessity and have a clear idea of their future corporate culture. It is not enough to write down the new values of the company on a piece of foil, each employee must be able to understand and accept his or her own future role.
Today, maintenance exceeds this definition, it is significantly more.
In many companies, it plays the role of an incubator for development
and drives digital transformation forward. The very essence of
Industrie 4.0 is the optimisation of the flow of information within as
well as outside of a company to accelerate the adjustment of company
organisations in the context of increasing competitive pressure.
Because of the variety of interfaces, information and data that
is available as well as its service character, maintenance lends itself easily as the area of choice for a company to make Industrie 4.0 real. Whilst doing so, the aim is not to equip employees with the
latest “gimmick“ for order processment or to be the company with
the highest number of lighthouse projects. Instead, maintenance
ensures reliable and cost-efficient production and, consequently,
the primary creation of added value of the manufacturing company.
Those who were identified as top performers during the “Smart
Maintenance“ consortium benchmarking by FIR at RWTH Aachen
University gain particular useful ideas twice as often as other follower companies directly from staff, thus releasing the right potential.
Information and data help to reach these goals and transfer the
vision of smart maintenance into actual pratice. But what is smart
maintenance exactly and how far along are you in the development
of your individual smart maintenance concept?