Derivation of Targets for the Portfolio Planning of a Solution Provider in Machinery Engineering

Companies in the machinery engineering sector are increasingly forced to make a strategic decision to transform from product to solution providers. Increasing competitive pressure from international competitors, fewer technological differentiation options for mechatronic products, increased establishment of software applications and increasingly individualized customer requirements are posing challenges for companies. The transformation into a solution provider is one way to address these challenges. In addition, the transformation promises stable sales in the long term and the opportunity to use the resources utilized longer and more intensively in terms of the circular economy. Accordingly, solution providers are no longer selling products, but rather individualized bundles of products, services and software applications in result-oriented business models. However, companies lack a suitable target system for the planning of the portfolio for this transformation. The target system provides a framework to make decisions about the necessary products, services and software applications in the portfolio as well as the most reasonable composition of portfolio elements for individualized solutions. To this end, this paper derives and describes the corresponding targets and associated target dimensions for planning the portfolio of solution providers.