Editor's note

2024 Spare Parts Business Platform — Power of 50

The biggest challenge in the spare parts sector since the pandemic has been the shortage problem. In and of itself, this is no longer the issue it has been in recent years. However, price surges triggered by the lack of available components have led to more pressing matters for manufacturers and suppliers.

As such, the recent influx of more affordable counterfeit parts to meet customer demands raises concerns about the integrity of the products and their financial viability. How can organizations optimize their pricing to remain competitive against non-genuine parts? And how can they enhance inventory management to help them eliminate the waste in the spare parts value chain?

At the 2024 Spare Parts Business Platform—Power of 50 hosted in February in Stockholm, keynote speakers from Siemens AG, Electrolux Group, Syncron, inriver, Husqvarna Construction, Ariston Group, Marel, Baxter Planning, Airbus, Coveo, Katoen Natie, and Cavotec have gathered to discuss the strategies, technology, and solutions that can help organizations navigate these challenges. Here are the key points highlighted during the event.

1. Pricing automation for enquiries, quotations, and low revenue impact: Pricing automation is a great tool for adjusting prices in many scenarios, whether it’s one-off prices or catalogue prices. However, it can be particularly helpful for those organizations that need to increase their response time to market demand, manage a high number of SKUs in the aftermarket, align efforts with margin goals, and mitigate risks. When these organizations leverage automation for enquiries, quotations, one-off pricing, low quantities, and low revenue impact, it can help them streamline the process and reduce the risk of losing a sale.

2. Delivering customer value in the servitization journey: When shifting from selling spare parts to selling uptime, organizations must do more than optimize inventory costs—they must optimize the total cost of ownership. To achieve this, organizations must implement a transformative solution that helps track the installed base by customer and asset to enable the proactive identification of service needs, offer services that meet customer needs, incentivize the sales force to sell services, optimize spare parts pricing and SLAs, enhance the service operations structure with strategically located service centres, and further develop metrics on aftermarket sales performance.

3. Remanufacturing spare parts for a sustainable business: Concerned with the ecological impact of manufacturing, organizations are keen on extending the lifespans of components that would otherwise be considered waste in order to make positive contributions to the circular economy, increase spare parts availability, and create new business opportunities. According to reports, reconditioning spare parts can support service businesses during warranty periods, reduce warranty costs, mitigate supply risks, and more.

Thank you to everyone who attended and made the 2024 Spare Parts Business Platform—Power of 50 a true success!

 

Lisa Hellqvist
Managing Director
Copperberg