M4E #25: What is servitization?
Industry 4.0 paves the way towards a Fourth Industrial revolution but, would it be a real revolution without relevant changes in manufacturing business models? Servitization is one new word for one of these changes when supported by disrupting digital innovations in manufacturing, as it is not really a novel concept (companies have provided services such as machine maintenance for many years). Let’s go and see what this servitization term means in the context of digital transformation with the next video from The Advanced Services Group.
Time for Insights
Currently, companies are looking for new and diversified revenue sources that provide added value to customers, thus the increase of service provision in manufactured assets. Advanced data analytics such as predictive maintenance or improved efficiency monitoring are amongst others some examples of “4.0 servitization”.
As usual with any new paradigm, servitization may have some downsides if it is not correctly implemented. If asset manufacturers provide services in their products without taking into account open standards and sharing information with their customers, we risk creating a vendor lock-in situation as well as a wide range of different platforms and services for similar solutions.
To avoid this lack of collaboration between stakeholders, some organizations such as the Plattform Industrie 4.0 have discused some approaches to overcome this problem.