SKF Group (SKF)
Canvas Category Machinery : Process Technology : Bearing
SKF’s mission is to be the undisputed leader in the bearing business. The company does this by offering solutions that reduce friction and CO2 emissions, whilst at the same time increasing machine uptime and performance. SKF’s products and services around the rotating shaft include bearings, seals, lubrication management, artificial intelligence and wireless condition monitoring.
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SKF uses cloud to offer new business models
In production environments, there’s an alternative to owning resources and outsourcing: performance-based contracts. At SKF, for example, customers pay to use assets and benefit from guaranteed uptime. Effective delivery of Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) business models depends on data collection and processing. On top of that, MindSphere, the leading industrial IoT as a service solution, as part of the Xcelerator portfolio brings quite a few more advantages.
The advantage of so-called Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) business models is that companies pay for only what they use. Increasingly, XaaS is being extended to production assets. An example can be found with SKF, a manufacturer of, among others, rotating equipment like bearings. The idea is simple; Instead of buying industrial bearings – whether for conveyor belts, pumps, crushers, paper machines, steel or pulp mills and railway bogies – SKF’s customers pay for uninterrupted rotation services. Under SKF’s Rotating Equipment Performance service, customers pay a fixed fee, which covers the provision of bearings, seals, lubrication and condition monitoring.
SKF uses cloud to offer new business models
The idea is simple: Instead of buying industrial bearings – whether for conveyor belts, pumps, crushers, paper machines, steel or pulp mills and railway bogies – SKF’s customers pay for uninterrupted rotation services. Under SKF’s Rotating Equipment Performance service, customers pay a fixed fee, which covers the provision of bearings, seals, lubrication and condition monitoring.
On the topic of payment: For many manufacturing operations, the argument for XaaS is that payments fall under operational expenditures (OPEX), thus leaving capital expenditure (CAPEX) budgets intact for the big, essential investments. When a contract is drawn up the parties agree on targets, which could be machine production level, uptime or other KPIs. Digitalization is essential for delivery and to ensure the promised uptime.
Aside from detecting failures before they happen, data evaluation is essential for selecting the right rotation services. SKF can measure the rotating equipment performance and from the data recognize whether the solution it has proposed is meeting its customers’ needs. If not, adjustments can be made to provide the best solution possible.