December/January 2019

| 26 | December/January 2020 | SOLUTIONS | R egardless of industry or vertical, companies around the world are encountering a new generation of customers with ever-evolving expectations, and these new demands are forcing brands to redefine the way they do business. Today’s customers overwhelmingly favour the simplicity of subscription models, where they pay a flat monthly fee for access to a product in the form of a service. For example, consumers no longer buy or rent DVDs, they subscribe to Netflix; more of them prefer services from Uber or Lyft over traditional car ownership. As these digital-age consumers enter the industrial workforce in large numbers, they are causing a redefinition of business models, leading to an increased trend towards subscription-based services in manufacturing industries. This shift towards a subscription-based business model in the manufacturing industry is being referred to as servitisation, where manufacturers no longer strictly sell new products, but instead sell access to and the outcome those products deliver. This new way of delivering services is forcing manufacturers to shift to subscription-based pricing models, where Product-as-a-Service (PaaS) becomes the norm. Manufacturers of complex industrial equipment, because they operate in a B2B environment, can attribute this shift to another major cause: their customers are also dealing with complex operating paradigms, forcing them to improve productivity and capital utilisation. In these scenarios, customers are looking to simplify their Machine learning and predictive analytics: Reshaping manufacturing Vivek Shah, Syncron, takes a look at how machine learning and predictive analytics are reshaping manufacturing.