Servitisation is the new business model
For the entire machinery segment, the area in which to compete and accept challenges will increasingly be data processing for the creation of services such as continuous process or product improvement and remote maintenance and support.
Today, a machine is able to provide data throughout its life cycle, creating the conditions for their conversion into money. Every time a machine connected to the production environment is brought into the factory, not only does it introduce technology aimed at creating products, but also data, which, through specific processing and analysis, enable the creation of services ranging from continuous process or product improvement to remote maintenance and assistance. There is therefore a need, especially for machinery companies, for an evolutionary strategy to deal with the risk of being overtaken by the new digital native players, the so-called newcomers. However, changes are neither immediate nor straightforward, as the emergence of a new technology initially gives rise to hybrid scenarios, integrating new and old business models.
The main motivations driving companies towards new business models are therefore essentially threefold:
– the search for solutions capable of offering efficient, low-cost and rapidly implemented maintenance and technical assistance services;
– the search for solutions to collect information about the operation of an asset and its energy consumption, in order to maximise its effectiveness;
– the search for solutions and ways to offer operational service models, such as turnkey asset management.
These trends were highlighted by Sergio Cassinelli, General Manager of Miraitek4.0, a company in which GELLIFY and Azimut have recently concluded a co-investment operation which will allow, thanks also to the ‘gellification’ program, to exploit new synergies for technological and commercial development, as well as to strengthen the technical team in order to be ready to understand and anticipate the new technological trends of the market.
Specialists in 4.0 solutions
Miraitek4.0 supports companies wishing to enrich their customer service offering by controlling their machinery and production performance with advanced Industrial IoT software to enable remote monitoring in order to guarantee effective after-sales assistance with short lead times and a high level of knowledge of the problems encountered. Over the last two years,” Cassinelli continued, “we have been able to support various companies in their journey towards servitisation, providing 4.0 solutions as fundamental Industrial IoT tools. The Covid experience has been striking: thanks to the monitoring installed at some of our customers, several machinery manufacturing companies have been able to offer their services even during the darkest periods of the pandemic, significantly reducing downtime”. For more information on this topic, some of the most significant experiences, in different industrial sectors, are presented on the Case Study page of www.miraitek.com. “Our customers,” Miraitek4.0’s General Manager continued, “can visualise machine data in order to offer customers constant remote support, leading to an improvement in after-sales service, with a reduction of more than 20% in terms of service time and a consequent increase in customer satisfaction thanks to the greater efficiency of the entire process.
One of the most innovative applications for plant manufacturers is Mirai4Acceptance, developed to manage remote testing. “This software,” the General Manager explained, “has enabled our customers to sell and test plants even in the midst of a pandemic. In fact, Mirai4Acceptance guarantees a dual benefit: thanks to the possibility of performing the entire testing phase remotely, the application brings a significant reduction in testing time and costs. “The main differentiation factor of our software,” Cassinelli explained, “apart from its high reliability, remains its ease of use and remarkable flexibility in customisation, which is why many of our customers have chosen us and continue to rely on our solutions even while technologies advance”.