Aftermarket Availability for Ramp-Up with SKF

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.