IN PERSON
SERVITISATION Much has been said about the lifecycle of a machine. Essentially, it starts from when the machine is created and sold, until it expires. The objective of this is to simply sell the equipment, for companies to hit KPIs and targeted margins in their sales. But SCM wants to go beyond that, extending the concept to the customer itself. “What we want to work towards is becoming a loyal partner to our customers,” said Gheller. “We want to create new business models for our customers’ needs; we do not want to just be a machine supplier.” This is where servitisation comes in. Broadly speaking, servitisation in the manufacturing industry refers to a shift in priority: Rather than just offering products, manufacturing businesses add services alongside it. But specific to SCM, servitisation can be split into three categories, each indispensable in making a long-lasting relationship with a customer possible. First is innovation, second is service excellence, and third is competencies. To do this, the company focuses on developing an ecosystem made of machinery, services, software, and the skills and competencies not only trained in their own engineers and dealers — over here, Gheller proudly stated that SCM invests around 7% of their annual turnover into R&D, a figure “at the top of the pyramid” — but also to provide to their customers. INNOVATION Under servitisation, new products and solutions have to be designed with the customer in mind. One example that Gheller provided is SCM’s recently launched Digital Control Room, a service in which the advanced analysis of the data collected from over 2,000 connected machines worldwide is combined with the expertise of SCM technicians to identify situations of risk or improvement, and the respective prescriptions.
Instrumental to the Digital Control Room is the IoT solution that SCM has been releasing progressively over the last two years: the Maestro suite. Through their Maestro software and digital solutions, such as Maestro Connect, SCM gets data on how their customers are operating the machines, what their needs and issues are, and so forth. In that way, SCM can move from a reactive to a proactive approach — in other words, rather than waiting for problems to crop up, SCM can prevent problems from hindering their customers’ operations. Furthermore, with Maestro Connect, operators can remotely monitor their work, observe any machine stops even at a distance from where it occurred; analyse the trends in the machine’s operating; organise ordinary and scheduled maintenance work; open a ticket requesting support from SCM’s Service and then being able to monitor its progress; and order and receive spare parts, services, training and software by directly accessing SCM’s Spare parts e-shop. “So far, we have got positive feedback from our customers [about the Digital Control Room], and we feel that innovation about our technologies, which of course remains at the core of our business, together with the concept of service excellence and competencies, are really at the essence of our strategy for the future,” said Gheller.
SCM’s investments into digitalisation can be seen as part of the bigger trend of Industry 5.0 — a step above Industry 4.0, where it combines digitalisation on one side, and energy consumption on the other. When asked about what he thinks of Industry 5.0, Gheller said SCM has taken note of it, since it is strongly related to servitisation. “We are running programmes related to energy consumption, or sustainability in general,” said Gheller. “Our machines are able to provide these kinds of services to our customers, or we can customise them to our customers’ specific needs.” An SCM digital solution that helps to reduce consumption is SCM’s MES software called WIN MES. It aims to oversee the production of their customers by maximising productivity, reducing energy consumption and waste, and thus allowing for a better quality of the end product. SERVICE EXCELLENCE Complementing innovation is service excellence, where SCM designs products that are easy to service across their lifetime. It is about providing quality and timely after- sales service through the lifecycle of a machine. But more specifically for Gheller, it is also about being close to their customers: “In recent times we have been launching new branches — such as in Turkey, India, Vietnam, and Slovenia. We are continuously
Maestro is SCM’s suite of software and digital services developed to help
their customer maximise their productivity
SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2024 | PANELS & FURNITURE ASIA 27
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