Focus on: Skills & Training Maintenance Matters Annual Buyers’ Guide 2024 www.pwemag.co.uk Plant & Works Engineering | 17 interact with customers and their products. Servitisation – the shift towards selling outcomes rather than machines – needs advanced technologies to make it work. Predictive maintenance using AI analytics from IoT data sources, as well as the optimisation of service teams and spare parts delivery, are key to these new customer relationships. Digital tools are increasingly at the heart of modern, dynamic service teams, enabling realtime analysis and reporting, communication, and organisation - and it is not stopping there. Here is an industry that is ripe for digital disruption and change, embracing automation and advanced analytics where possible, to not just improve performance but to also reduce costs and environmental impacts. Servitisation is also at the heart of the thrust towards a circular economy. The value of repairing and re-using equipment keeps costs low and ensures productivity uptime. Servitisation is built on that premise, that organisations trust their suppliers to deliver, manage and ensure machine uptime and results. This is focused on a maintenance and repair culture and not a rip and replace culture. Maintenance and service intelligence are also increasingly fed back into product design, improving how machines are built, with a leaning towards more modular components, for more economical and ecological maintenance. This is where data intelligence delivered through automation but also engineer observation, is seeing tangible results in reduced paper processes and machine waste. While being a field service engineer may not be at the top of the wish list for many Gen Zers – to be honest, as Glassdoor research reveals it’s not at the top for non-Gen Zers either - the industry has a growing reputation for being forward thinking when it comes to carbon reduction and digital deployment. Engineers are now the frontline operators for so many organisations, helping customers solve problems rather than just turning up to fix stuff. Service technologies have already enabled considerable change and that change is not about to stop. For Gen Z, this is surely hitting a sweet spot, while for field service teams, faced with an ageing and retiring workforce, Gen Z is a much-needed injection of digital talent. • ADHESIVES, SEALANTS & SPRAYS • CLEANING & HYGIENE • FLOOD PREVENTION • HOSES & FITTINGS • SPILL KITS & CONTAINMENT • TOOLS • WHEELIE BINS • AND MUCH, MUCH MORE “You don’t know what I got” Industry Superstore Ltd Units 8 & 9, Lexden Lodge Industrial Estate, Jarvis Brook, Crowborough, East Sussex, TN6 2NQ. +44 (0) 1892 66 44 99 …ask Steve, he can help you with that!
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