What is Service Lifecycle Management (SLM), and how can it help your business become more profitable? 

SLM is the common abbreviation for Service Lifecycle Management. This is the strategic approach to service planning and delivery that helps to maximise product uptime for both the user and service revenue for the manufacturer. This approach enables businesses to effectively support products, especially focusing on them after they have been delivered to the customer. It includes both service engineering and service planning, both of which represent crucial functions of SLM software. 

The main goal of SLM is to optimise both product design and service operations in a way that enables both the manufacturer and the user to gain maximum benefits throughout the product’s lifecycle. By using both engineering and manufacturing information from service planning through to execution. By creating a closed loop system, SLM software can improve product serviceability and therefore overall product reliability.  

How SLM fits in with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

SLM is a key part of PLM, and the step which focused on improving the service readiness of your products. SLM manages the complex web of information associated with a product, reducing the cost and time needed to create and deliver critical service documentation while also improving the quality and efficacy of the information. 

SLM is a valuable strategy for businesses, particularly manufacturers who may be facing increasingly tight profit margins. It enables business to increase revenue via services, add-ons and upgrades. This also works as a counterbalance for revenue as when sales decrease, service activity likewise increases. SLM delivers high quality service at decreased prices which leads to a better ROI. 

4 key components of Service Lifecycle Management

• Service Engineering: This stage starts during the product design phase. Creating a strategy here means that you begin by addressing the main attributes of serviceability. Such as product reliability, serviceable architecture, ergonomics, etc. Service engineering is supported by SLM, using the data collected from their assets and maintenance history. Companies can then utilise this data to create and implement better service updates and designs.
   
• Service Planning: The next step within SLM is service planning. This ensures both efficiency and effectiveness in product servicing, as it provides the users with an in-depth knowledge base of numerous factors and can drive service events, as well as providing the resource requirements to effectively deliver that service. Service planning communicates detail-rich information which can be curated to each team’s individual needs, to allow users to monitor and understand their assets. This provides technicians with the information and resources they may require to perform all the service activities needed.
   
• Service Information: This is centralised knowledge base that can be managed by SLM software, creating an easily accessible resource library for support and service operations. Enabling an interactive information source which supports all the service activities, including physical assets, their configuration, bill of materials (BOM), Service BOM (SBOM), service history and product status.
   
• Service Execution: The final component is service execution, which supports decision making by utilising data to enable technicians. It does this by providing the correct information for maintenance, such as configuration, parts, and data during service activities. While reducing costs for executing these work orders.  

Reducing costs across the Service Lifecycle

Through implementing the right SLM strategies and solutions, you can look to greatly reduce costs of trivial service tasks. For example, by applying the Industrial Internet of Things for remote monitoring and connectivity you can easily access real time asset performance data. Having access to this information wherever and whenever you need it means you can mitigate the need for physical service interventions and solve more issues remotely, you can also react to potential challenges before they become a problem.

Layering this with interactive troubleshooting and diagnostics can also significantly improve first time fix rates and repair costs whilst reducing asset down time. Predetermining issues through root cause analysis will give your service team a better idea of the resources they will need, the skill set they must use and the best tools for the job before attending to the task at hand.  

What’s more, if you equip your technicians with the right tools, information and training you can better prepare them for the service task. By utilising Interactive 3D Technical Publications, you can look to improve first time fix rates and increase overall efficiency. 3D Technical Publications can help accelerate training and knowledge retention, as well as guide technicians through a step-by-step process which reduces their margin for error, speeding up the entire process.  

Other benefits of improving your Service Lifecycle Management:

• Increased operational efficiency 
• Improved visibility 
• Reduced risks 
• Improve asset uptime, as well as increasing first-time fix rates 

• Increase revenue through targeted upgrades 
• Increase customer satisfaction 
• Create new service business models 

Only through assessing your current SLM business can you begin to identify where you’ll be able to create these efficiencies and which solutions would be best for the job. Start by assessing the 4 key components of SLM to begin optimising your product design and service operations 

Why CAD-IT?

Over the past 30 years, we’ve helped hundreds of businesses to identify the inefficiencies within their service operations and worked closely to address these issues and implement tailored solutions that works to their exacting requirements.
  We offer a range of solutions and services which are tailored to accelerate the productivity of your aftersales business. Providing specialised consultancy alongside expert advice and practical solutions that help businesses bring products to market in the most cost effective and efficient way possible. Helping to support customers across multiple industries ensuring they employ the right strategy for their products and services.
 

For more information about SLM or any of the services CAD-IT provides, contact us at info@cadituk.com