Economics and ecology are two success factors to secure the leading position of German machinery and equipment manufacturers in global markets. As customers tend to plan on a project base, they do not remunerate high quality standards and the longevity of German products. This is expressed in falling product prices and thus in declining margins of the manufacturers.
Due to the missing planning of the single utilisation phases, the economic advantages resulting from an intensification and extension of the utilisation are underestimated. Following utilisation phases are either not at all or only insufficiently considered in the product development. As a result the conformity to changed future requirements is uneconomical or even impossible. The flexibility to react on future requirements is not given.
Society demands safe jobs and environmentally friendly utilisation phases of machinery and equipment in order to enable a sustainable reduction of resource consumption, both in the development and in the utilisation of the machinery and equipment. So far environmental aspects were observed and transferred only as far as it was a legal restraint or on market pressure. Only a few companies pursue an environmental policy integrated into their strategy, due to unrecognised economic potential that can be gained from pursuing a business strategy integrating an economic and ecological efficient utilisation of resources.
Comparing the requirements of different stakeholders, the machinery and equipment manufacturers’ dilemma becomes clear: society’s claims stand in opposition to the customers’ demand for high productivity and minimal costs over the entire product life cycle.
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The objective is the realisation of an economic and ecologically efficient utilisation of resources (see figure above). Strategies for machinery and equipment manufacturers are generated with focus on the value creation chain to show ways of sustainable profitability. Services and physical products are bundled to ‘performance systems’, which are newly configured again and again in time progress in order to enable further utilisations. These performance systems allow new business models and better customer retention.
The aspects of sustainability and integrated services are systematically considered in a new product development process for physical products which offers more possibilities to reconfigure the product. Thus the increased flexibility of machinery and equipment enables manufacturers to react flexibly to customer requirements especially in following utilisation phases. Therefore the utilisation of resources is intensified and extended. As a result total utility for all stakeholders is increased.
New business structures and processes are required to realise the new performance systems and strategies. An expanded simultaneous engineering concept will enable parallel and integrated development of product and business design.
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