Lean After Sales Service - An Opportunity for OEMs to Ensure Profits

摘要

Original equipment manufacturers (OEM) have recently recognized that offering after sales services enables higher revenues and profits (for example additional services, spare parts or accessories business). For this reason, OEMs have decided to step up efforts to improve or offer additional after sales services in order to achieve competitive advantages. Moreover, offering after sales services combined with primary products is an appropriate instrument to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Due to the increasing competitive pressure in the after sales service sector, methods and instruments have to be identified to sustain a profitable business area. In branch of production, the use of lean production systems turned out as a suitable application to secure and improve competitiveness, to reduce waste in production and to realize sustainable profits. Therefore, in this paper a methodical approach to transfer lean production system (LPS) principles to customer service as well as a qualitative applicability of the principles will be described. For transferring LPS principle to customer service, the reference guideline "VDI 2870 - Lean production systems" published by The Association of German Engineers is used.