Spare part business growth strategy : a case study of an industrial OEM’s capital project

The purpose of the study was to evaluate how the case company, an industrial process equipment manufacturer, could improve their future spare part business growth potential. The assumption is that the case company is missing significant spare part business revenues due to suboptimal business strategies and efforts in the capital project phase. Action research was the selected research methodology, because the writer of the thesis had the opportunity to work two years full time as a spare part coordinator of the case project. The main research question was “what can the case company do in the capital project phase to improve the future spare part business growth potential”. Industrial OEM service business trends, product lifecycle management and industrial maintenance standards for spare parts provisioning, and previous capital spare part projects were benchmarked, and the lessons learned were applied on the case study project. As a result of the research, a strategic guideline was presented for the case company. The results and recommendations may also be useful for any other industrial OEM looking to improve their project spare part business processes. As an answer to the research question, OEM spare part business growth can be achieved by improving four main strategic areas: spare part data quality, digital sales strategies, installed base data and organization and communication