Enabling industrial service providers to offer comprehensive service contracts

Considering the increasing importance of services for manufacturing environments, service providers want to gain a competitive advantage through ever more comprehensive service offer portfolios. To be in the position to offer such service without the danger of underpricing or not achievable performance targets, the providers need transparency on the own costs and performances. However, because of the often very complex setup within a company, the service divisions lack this transparency. Within the framework of an EU-funded project tools and methods are developed, in order to provide service providers with this transparency. The paper presents the business case of a company in the packaging machine industry, which participates in this project, and describes the developed tools.