Customers in industrial machinery don’t invest in standard products. They invest in individually configured systems that are manufactured, assembled, and operated to their exact specifications for years or even decades. What emerges is more than a machine. It’s a system with its own configuration, specific components, and a history that continually grows.
This makes service not a downstream task, but a central part of the entire lifecycle. Companies like ABUS Kransysteme and Sartorius manage these processes with SERVICE 1’s field service management software.
Why legacy systems reach their limits in service
Service today accounts for around 20% of revenue in industrial machinery, but for far more of the profit. While margins in new-machine business are often in the low single digits, they frequently exceed 30% in service.
At the same time, what customers buy is changing. No longer the system itself, but its availability. Service contracts with guaranteed response times and uptime commitments shift operational responsibility to the manufacturer. Legacy systems weren’t built for this task. They’re designed around the order, not the asset. Assembly, maintenance, repair, contract, and spare parts sit in separate systems. Technicians lack information, partner services remain invisible, supplier claims go unclaimed, and billing is created through manual rework. Every handoff between systems costs time, margin, and traceability.
The asset at the center: from machine to digital equipment record
Service organizations differ above all in what triggers their service. Classically, service begins with a customer call: a system fails, a work order is created, a technician heads out. Service organizations in industrial machinery instead put the asset at the center. Its configuration, history, and usage determine which service activities are needed before a failure even occurs.
Reactive service repairs. Asset-centric service understands. The difference is the data foundation.
The basis for this is the digital equipment record. It brings together all information about a system in one central source: the configuration as sold, the components actually installed, changes from assembly and commissioning, the complete maintenance and repair history, and warranties down to the component level. No one starts their work without context. No one has to call a colleague to find out what was replaced two years ago.
“After reviewing SERVICE 1’s product portfolio, we then decided to standardize our own processes even further by building on the standard interfaces of Proalpha and SERVICE 1, and by leveraging the core capabilities of the ERP system and service module for our own applications.”
Sven Schöneberg, ABUS Kransysteme GmbH
Assembly as the first service process
Service in industrial machinery doesn’t begin with the first fault, but with assembly. Different trades, external partners, material from various sources, and commissioning under time pressure all have to come together. The difficulty is rarely the individual trade; it’s the handoffs between them. If one trade slips by two days, everything that follows slips too.
Anyone coordinating these processes with spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls quickly loses track: delays go unnoticed, material is missing on site, installers arrive before the prerequisites are in place. A field service management system maps sequence and dependencies instead of just listing appointments side by side. The dispatcher immediately sees which commitments are at risk and can replan before an installer shows up on Monday to a system that isn’t ready yet.
Service contracts as a source of revenue
The service contract isn’t a side business; it’s the revenue that recurs predictably, even in years when no new system is sold. Three things determine whether it carries margin: the accuracy of the service delivered, the enforcement of claims against manufacturers and suppliers, and billing that reflects what was actually performed.
Profitability here doesn’t come from higher prices, but from precision: the right deployment at the right time, the right material in the right quantity, no after-the-fact corrections. Systematically enforcing supplier claims is the underrated savings potential in the service contract. Those who pursue them recover costs that would otherwise disappear into their own margin..
On-site repair: knowledge and spare parts at the right moment
The system is down, the technician is on site. Now every minute counts. What’s broken? What’s still under warranty? Which spare part is needed, and is it in stock? With mobile access to the digital equipment record, the technician has the answers on hand: bill of materials and configuration, the complete history, and the claim status for each component.
The technician doesn’t go to the customer alone. The entire equipment history goes along.
A digital assistant increasingly supports the process in the background. It suggests relevant knowledge articles, checks what the contract covers, and helps with documentation, so the technician can focus on the repair. And what they see on site is often more than just the current job: increased wear, missing contracts, modernization needs. Capturing this in a structured way turns the repair visit into the starting point for the next quote.
How do you get started?
Not every service organization needs this level of depth from day one, but especially in complex industrial machinery, it pays off: the more complex the system, the greater the need for reliability. The longer the service life, the more service processes accumulate. The path begins with a clean data foundation — a bill of materials, configuration, and components that match reality — and with integration into ERP and PLM, so data isn’t maintained twice.
Successful service organizations take this path step by step. They start where the pain is greatest and expand as soon as the first results become measurable. That’s how a cost center becomes a business unit that pays for itself.
FAQ – Field Service Management for Industrial Machinery
Field service management covers the planning, execution, and documentation of all service processes on machines and equipment: assembly, maintenance, and repair. In industrial machinery, the asset is at the center: the individual system with its configuration and history – rather than the individual work order. Software like SERVICE 1 brings together the digital equipment record, contracts, spare parts, and knowledge on a single platform.
ERP and PLM systems know the design and product view of a machine, but not its serviceable structure. A technician doesn’t need a design bill of materials, but information about which components are installed, which spare parts fit, and which work has already been carried out. This is exactly what the service bill of materials is for; it connects the FSM system with the ERP without maintaining data twice.
Through service contracts that recur predictably, through systematically enforced warranty and supplier claims, and through retrofit business arising from what the technician identifies on site. This requires a consistent data foundation that enables complete billing and avoids margin loss from manual rework.
CPQ and field service management are classically thought of as separate: CPQ belongs to sales, FSM belongs to service. But this very separation costs revenue. What was configured in CPQ (product variants, components, specifications) is the data foundation for every later service engagement. If this data isn’t transferred seamlessly into the FSM system, technicians work with incomplete information. Upselling potential goes unrecognized. Modernization recommendations can’t be automated. Integrating CPQ and FSM creates a closed loop: from quote to delivery to service and back to the next quote.
The more complex the systems, the longer their service life, and the more components and data are involved, the stronger the case for a unified platform. Especially for manufacturers guaranteeing availability or entering new business models like Equipment as a Service, field service management becomes a strategic tool.
Mehr zum Thema: CPQ und FSM | Mobile Field Service | KI im Field Service
