The "Smart" Product Lifecycle

Have you ever noticed the four unassuming words that serve as the sub-title for this blog: "redefining the product lifecycle"? It occurred to me that we have yet to sufficiently address what this means. So here goes...

Much of today's business-value dialogue surrounding smart services revolves around aftermarket service - the final stage of the product lifecycle. And rightly so, as OEMs and their service network partners stand to gain innumerable near-term benefits from increased machine intelligence.

But what about the other key stages of the product lifecycle? Namely, Design, Manufacture, and Sell (see inset). Can smart services drive business value upstream as well? Without a doubt!

For the purposes of this discussion, I'll focus on the "Design" and "Sell" stages. First, Design. Most manufacturers employ Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) to help them identify and analyze the causes and impacts of failures throughout the value chain. As part of design-for-quality (DFQ) initiatives, design and engineering teams use FMEA to predict product performance problems that might occur in operation.

More than half of companies that participated in a recent Aberdeen Group study have already deployed technology and tools to support FMEA. With access to timely machine performance data and trends afforded by smart services, these tools could allow design engineers to more accurately guard against future product failures. This kind of feedback loop between service and design seems intuitive enough, yet nearly three-quarters of companies studied by Aberdeen exhibit ad hoc or no collaboration among service, manufacturing, and design. Smart services might eventually bridge these costly gaps.

In addition to design-for-quality, many manufacturers also have design-for-serviceability (DFS) initiatives underway, whereby engineers model service scenarios using virtual prototypes. The goal is to anticipate service requirements at the point of design to minimize support costs and complexities. For example, some manufacturers try to optimize the mix of field replaceable units (FRUs) and customer replaceable units (CRUs) in order to minimize the burden on the field service force and maintain service margins. Instead of virtual prototypes - whose accuracy and currency are approximate at best - smart services-enabled machines could provide real-time and ongoing field service intelligence to design teams working on new product designs.

Now, in the "Sell" stage, machine intelligence can be integrated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to more accurately qualify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for such items as service contracts, consumables, and the like. Further, as more manufacturers are experimenting with pay-for-performance contracts or PBAs (performance based agreements), historical equipment usage trends can be analyzed to ensure profitability on future PBAs.

These are just a few examples of how smart services can dramatically reduce latencies and gaps in the product lifecycle. There are many others. Have some of your own? Disagree with the ones discussed here? Post a comment and let us know.