Past opportunity

Aftermarket Availability for Ramp-Up with SKF

Demand prediction
Algorithm development
Predictive supply chain planning

Industry

Industrials

Revenue

2021

€7.2B

Employees

2021

40,000+

Countries

2021

130+

About

SKF is a world-leader in bearings and related technologies. SKF is active in a range of industries from aerospace to food and beverage, whereas one is the Agricultural machinery sector to which SKF provides products and services. For the agricultural spare parts market, SKF offers an Agri specialized distributor program in the agricultural spare part market, to help distributors grow their bearing business. Now, SKF is looking for solutions to help manage and optimize the availability of SKF products to Agricultural Distributors.

Opportunity overview

Agricultural distributors partnering with SKF can provide their customers (Agri dealers and farmers, the ones that repairs agri machines) with the spare parts (including SKF products) and equipment they need, when they need them, even during intense farming periods. We know that the high availability of machinery and spare parts for maintenance is crucial in ensuring high productivity and solid sales growth, but due to the highly seasonal nature of agriculture and complexities related to the prediction of demand spikes, this can be easier said than done. The challenge to successfully ramp up business is enhanced particularly when production time and lag is high. For distributors to succeed in the aftermarket, they need to be able to buy from SKF, deliver and fulfill the demand of their customers for agricultural equipment even on short notice.

By being able to analyze the data of the market, customers and existing sales of a few thousands of products, the demand could be estimated more accurately so that the availability of SKF stock could consequently be optimized. This would benefit the agricultural distributors that sell the spare parts for machinery maintenance, and the inventory levels do not need to be excessive in order to account for the availability problem, which in turn is cash consuming. SKF sees the partnership with agricultural distributors as a business of increasing focus, and we are now looking for innovative data-driven solutions to indicate demand-chain management and logistics.

Your opportunity with SKF

SKF is the world's largest manufacturer of bearings and related technologies, with 17,000 distributors in 130 countries. As a leader in our field, we can offer outstanding potential for scaling the solution of your company in the global market. We are looking for innovative solution providers who can help us effectivize our inventory logistics to improve the offerings for agricultural distributors . In the short term, the selected solution provider will get technical and financial support to develop concept prototypes for further evaluation. We would like to work together and share our industry knowledge to provide you with valuable learnings enabling your company further opportunities within the industry.

An example of what we're interested in

Automated algorithm to continuously analyze historical data and customer forecast inputs

An algorithm that is built to gain insights from historical sales data and market movements could be a key to continuously updating demand in order to replenish the stock enough to meet demand but not overstock. This could be done weekly or monthly, depending on the speed of growth/ramp up of specific range of products. A reduced level of human interaction would also increase the scalability and efficiency of the system.

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