Field Service for Mechanical and Plant Engineering
Focusing on the Asset.
Your machines are highly complex, your contracts span decades, and yet, when it comes to service, the profitability of a service call is often still determined case by case. SERVICE 1 puts the asset at the center: data-driven, AI-powered, end-to-end from installation to the technician on site, and designed for the entire lifecycle of the plant.
Growing systems manage work orders.
SERVICE 1 manages the asset.
Service now accounts for roughly 20 percent of revenue in mechanical and plant engineering, but contributes far more to profitability: While margins on new equipment often sit in the low single digits, they frequently exceed 30 percent in service.
At the same time, customer expectations are rising. Companies increasingly buy not the equipment itself, but its availability. Service contracts with guaranteed response times and uptime commitments shift operational responsibility to the manufacturer, while equipment grows more complex and experienced service staff becomes scarcer.
This fundamentally changes the economic role of service.
Legacy IT systems hit a wall here because they’re built around the individual service order, not the asset. Commissioning, maintenance, repair, contracts, and spare parts sit in separate silos. The result: missing information on site, unused supplier claims, and manual rework at month-end. Here’s what a unified service platform enables:
Predictable contract revenue
Recurring revenue even in years without new equipment sales.
Higher on-site productivity
Planned materials and mapped dependencies instead of repeat visits.
Enforced claims
Warranty and liability claims tracked down to the component level.
New business models
Availability and equipment as a service become predictable.
The data foundation makes the difference
Reactive service repairs.
Asset-centric service understands.
Customers don’t invest in standard products – they buy custom-configured equipment whose history grows over decades. When service data sits isolated, troubleshooting on site starts from zero nearly every time.
The technician doesn’t know which modifications were built in on site, supplier warranties expire unused, and modernization opportunities stay hidden. Only a shared data foundation transforms service from a cost center into a reliable profit driver for the entire organization.
What a service platform
for mechanical and plant engineering must deliver
01 Lifecycle
Map the complete equipment lifecycle end-to-end
A machine is a highly complex system with its own configuration and a history spanning decades. SERVICE 1 accompanies this lifecycle seamlessly from initial commissioning through maintenance and repair to retrofit and expansion.
02 Bill of Materials
Maintain your own service bill of materials (S-BOM)
Field service engineers don’t need a design BOM. They need to know which maintainable units are actually installed and which spare parts fit. The service BOM translates product structure into a deployment-ready equipment file.
03 Partners
Coordinate trades and subcontractors seamlessly
Mechanics, electrical, controls, and hydraulics must be orchestrated as carefully as internal technicians and external partners. The integrated partner portal brings subcontractors directly into service order execution, capacity planning, and time recording.
04 Maintenance
Cyclic Maintenance & Predictive Service
Equipment requires different tasks at different intervals (e.g., 6-month inspections vs. 24-month component replacement). SERVICE 1 automatically dispatches needed spare parts from stored maintenance plans – supplemented by IoT data for condition-based interventions before failure.
05 Guarantee and warranty
Audit-Proof Warranty Management & Billing
In complex service calls, maintenance flat rates, travel charges, customer repairs, and supplier warranties all come into play. SERVICE 1 accurately tracks warranty periods and error codes at the component level, initiates the parts return process, and automatically converts feedback into invoices that comply with regulations.
Success in service is no accident
Not every service organization needs this depth, but this is exactly where Field Service Management pays off. The more complex the equipment, the greater the need for reliability and certainty in service. The longer the lifecycle, the more service processes accumulate. And the more components and data involved, the more powerful a unified platform that brings it all together in one place.
Book your individual consultation now and speak with our experts about your opportunities.
ERP workaround. CRM standard.
Or a specialized best-of-breed platform.
Anyone looking to digitize field service in the mechanical and plant engineering industry has three options:
Option 1
ERP customizing
ERP systems manage financial service orders well but fall short on mobile field processes, complex trade dependencies, and mobile checklists.
Option 2
CRM without industry depth
Standard CRM modules focus on customer tickets but lack component history (S-BOM), component-level warranty management, and tiered maintenance schedules.
Option 3
Modular FSM platform
A specialized Field Service Management platform connects seamlessly to leading ERP, CRM, and PLM systems. Financial process control stays in your ERP, while SERVICE 1 delivers the deep field service logic and AI-driven orchestration.
What this path delivers
- End-to-end data flows from project planning to the mobile technician app, even offline
- Verified security & compliance: Certified to ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001, plus conformance with the European AI Act
- Integrated AI: SERVICE 1 combines multiple AI capabilities under one roof
- Integration with ERP, PLM, and IoT: Configuration data and sensor data flow automatically
A selection of our clients
Industry leaders
in mechanical and plant engineering
“With SERVICE 1, we’re able to digitalize and transform our service delivery.”
Sartorius, a global leader in laboratory and bioprocess technology, uses SERVICE 1’s FSM solution to digitalize technical field service and meaningfully optimize service processes.
Results:
Spare parts delivery performance improved (< 48 hours)
Response time to customers improved (from days to hours)
First-time fix rate improved to > 95%
ABUS Kransysteme GmbH relies on Proalpha and SERVICE 1
ABUS Kransysteme specializes in complex mechanical and plant engineering: crane systems and hoisting equipment that are installed, inspected, and maintained throughout Germany via a partner-driven service network.
“We particularly appreciate the commitment and dedication of the individual project participants, as well as their willingness to find and implement solutions that meet the customer’s needs.”
As well as market leaders in various industries rely on SERVICE 1
Frequently Asked Questions
What you should know about Field Service in the
Mechanical and Plant Engineering Industry
In classic mechanical and plant engineering, service is still often seen purely as a cost. The transformation works when reactive repair gives way to an asset-centric, data-driven service model. Then service becomes a reliable profit driver.
- Service contracts and tiered maintenance intervals ensure predictable, recurring revenue.
- When you systematically track warranty and supplier claims down to the component level, you recover costs.
- The technician on site sees wear and modernization opportunities and turns them into new business.
- Automated billing ensures no services slip through the cracks or get miscalculated.
Not at all. SERVICE 1 was built as a modular Enterprise Field Service Management (FSM) platform that integrates seamlessly into your existing system landscape via standard interfaces. Your existing ERP or CRM system remains the central authority for customer master data, financial service orders, and general accounting.
SERVICE 1 adds the functional depth that standard ERPs lack in the field: from AI-powered scheduling through service bill of materials (S-BOM) management to the mobile offline app for field service engineers. All feedback on working time, material consumption, photo documentation, and service reports flows automatically – without duplicate data entry – back into your primary system.
With highly complex equipment, warranty and liability claims against component suppliers often expire unused because warranty terms and associations aren’t tracked at the component level in standard ERPs.
SERVICE 1 captures warranty periods, manufacturing dates, and fault codes precisely by component. When a part is replaced on site, the system automatically recognizes existing claims, initiates the return of the defective component, and triggers the warranty process with the supplier. That recovers costs that would otherwise eat into your margin.
In machinery and equipment manufacturing, assembly and maintenance work is frequently performed by external service providers and partner networks. When they’re managed via email and phone calls outside the system, documentation gaps and quality risks emerge.
Through the SERVICE 1 partner portal, subcontractors work in the same system as your own technicians: accept service orders, assign technicians, record time and materials, attach photos and acceptance protocols directly to the service order. The equipment file stays complete.
Demographics pose a major challenge for machinery manufacturers: Over 40% of field service organizations face the reality that experienced experts are retiring and taking their implicit knowledge with them.
By integrating AI-powered knowledge management, the organization’s accumulated expertise becomes centrally available in the digital equipment file. New and less experienced field service engineers can search in natural language and access repair instructions, fault-code databases, and equipment-specific guidance in seconds. This dramatically shortens ramp-up time and allows less experienced staff to reach expert competency on site much faster.
In the shift from reactive maintenance to outcome-based service models, the machinery manufacturer guarantees fixed availability, uptime, or output volumes and assumes full downtime risk.
SERVICE 1 connects IoT sensor data directly to the digital equipment file and automatic scheduling. Anomalies trigger preventive service visits long before failure occurs. The complete transparency into equipment condition makes availability guarantees precisely calculable and transforms service into a source of predictable, recurring contract revenue.
As an enterprise SaaS platform, SERVICE 1 processes business-critical equipment data, customer histories, and trade secrets. The solution is independently audited and certified to:
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (Information Security)
- ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management)
All processed data and AI-based decision systems already meet the requirements of the European AI Act. This ensures machinery manufacturers have transparent, auditable, and revision-safe data processing at the highest enterprise standard.