Dynamic and Modular Business Models for Maintenance

Abstract

With more complex production environments maintenance must be viewed as a value-adding service, and this in turn require new business models and new ways to design service agreements. Many companies have not yet understood the business opportunities that could be achieved by providing maintenance services, and efficient strategies for enabling these opportunities are lacking. Moreover, many believe that you have to choose either or, thus either one provides product-oriented maintenance or value-oriented maintenance. This paper proposes an integrated, dynamic and modular approach to maintenance business model development. Modular-based maintenance offerings classify maintenance services with increasing integration of the offering, and increasing focus on utility for the customer and the customer’s customer. Continuing, modular-based maintenance offerings allow for flexibility; one does not have to choose between the product-centred or utility-centred business models. Instead, the offering is packaged based on the available internal resources and key capabilities of the service provider which are matched against specific customer needs. The dynamics of the maintenance offerings are the time and scope dimensions describing the boundaries in which maintenance execution could take place at the customer.