Extended service for machine builders

Building on data collection like in the condition monitoring scenario, you can take your customer service to a new level and simultaneously optimise your spare parts management.

For example, the real-time evaluation of counters can be used to draw conclusions about the remaining lifetime of wear parts. Based on this knowledge, you can proactively and automatically make suggestions to your customers for ordering spare parts or offer them a visit from a service technician. In this way, imminent downtimes can be avoided or substantially reduced. This can be done, for example, by creating a service message directly in the SAP standard when a typical threshold value for a wear part is reached, which then triggers the corresponding follow-up processes or suggests them to the responsible customer advisor/service employee.

If you have precise information about the expected spare parts demand of your customers, you can of course also optimise your spare parts management or your stock-keeping. This is because you know directly from the wear data transmitted by customers which parts you should keep in stock for which point in time and in what quantities and no longer have to fill your warehouse based on vague assumptions. Here, too, automation can be implemented very easily: Based on wear forecasts, replacement orders can be triggered in SAP MM at an early stage so that your stock is always precisely aligned with the actual requirements.

The added value for you as manufacturer: You offer your customers an improved service based on highly automated end-to-end processes. The data-based determination of demand for spare parts and wear parts enables you to stock them both leanly and precisely. In addition, you can better understand patterns and correlations through the available performance data and use these insights to further improve your products.

The advantages for your customers: You benefit from higher availability of your products, better service and shorter delivery times for spare/wear parts.

What data can be used? Basically, all possible sensor, machine and process data can be used for the extended service scenario - e.g. wear of common consumable parts, temperatures, speeds, service life, failures, malfunctions. This data is combined with information stored in SAP ERP for process automation.

Which protocols are used? We use common industry standards such as MQTT or OPC UA.

How can the scenario be set up? The machine-side provision of data, e.g. via OPC UA, is the basis for the extended service scenario. This data can then be loaded via the All for One IIoT Connector into a data lake based on Azure Time Series. There, they can be analysed, condensed and used in logics, the results of which trigger subsequent processes in SAP ERP (e.g. in SAP CS, MM or PP).

Via the extended service scenario, you can realise efficient, highly automated end-to-end processes that run beyond the boundaries of your ERP - up to the maschine used in customer's operation.