Spares and AMC: turning a machine sale into repeat revenue

The machine was commissioned and the last payment came in. Nobody from your side has spoken to the plant since. When a sealing jaw wears out, the fitter gets one made at the workshop down the road. To turn each sale into repeat revenue, record every machine you have installed: serial number, plant, commissioning date, who maintains it and which parts wear. Then contact the fitter before those parts go, and offer an annual maintenance contract (AMC) as the warranty ends, not on the day of sale.

Why the spares go to the workshop down the road

The fitter who looks after your machine was not there when it was sold. The fitter has the manual, if anyone kept it, and a phone full of local suppliers. When a part wears it is needed today, and the nearest lathe shop can copy the old one by evening. The fitter is not choosing a rival, just working without a part number, a price or a name to call at your end. The owner, meanwhile, sees the line stop and blames the machine. If the copied part works badly, your machine gets the reputation, with the owner's trade association and with the next plant that asks about you.

So the spares business is often lost for a reason other than price. It is lost because nobody at the maker's end remembers the machine exists.

The installed-machine register

Build it from what you already hold: sales invoices, installation and commissioning reports, warranty cards and the service engineer's visit notes. Make one entry per machine, not per customer. A plant with three machines bought at different times has three warranty dates.

MACHINE        Model, serial number, year of manufacture
PLANT          Buyer's name, town, the line it sits on
PRODUCT        What it runs: powder, granules, liquid; pack sizes
COMMISSIONED   Date of the trial run, signed off by the buyer
WARRANTY       Date it ends
PEOPLE         Owner; maintenance fitter (name, mobile); purchase
RUNNING        Shifts per day, as the fitter tells you
WEAR PARTS     Parts that wear on this model, with the life you
               have seen on similar machines running similar product
LAST SPARE     Part, date, and whether it came from you
AMC            None / offered on (date) / signed, from and to
NEXT CONTACT   Date, and the reason for it

The PRODUCT line matters more than it looks. The same machine packing masala powder and packing namkeen wears different parts first. Your service visits already tell you which. Makers of industrial machinery and equipment have most of this somewhere already, spread across files and phones.

Write before the part wears, not after it breaks

For each wear part, note how long it lasted on the last few machines running the same product. When a machine reaches that point, the fitter gets a message by name. Send it from your own phone, as a person:

"Ravi, the sealing jaws on your pouch machine have now run about as long as they lasted at the other chilli powder units we serve. That is when seals start to leak. The part number and price are on the list attached. If you want a set, I can send it tomorrow."

A part that arrives before the stoppage sells itself. After the stoppage, it is competing with the lathe shop on speed.

Start the habit at commissioning. Offer the recommended spares list from your quotation again, now as a kit: the parts that stop the line and cannot be bought locally in a day. What that list should carry in the quotation is covered in how to write a machine quotation the buyer's team can approve.

When to offer the AMC, and when not to

Offer it in the last weeks of the warranty. By then the buyer has had your service visits free and can see what losing them would cost. Offered at the sale, the AMC is an extra line on a price the buyer is already negotiating, and purchase cuts it first.

Offer an AMC when:

• the plant runs two or more shifts, so a stoppage costs real output;
• nobody on site can do more than basic maintenance;
• your engineer can reach the plant without a two-day trip, for a planned visit and for a breakdown.

Sell spares and a call-out rate instead when the plant has its own strong maintenance team. Do the same if the machine runs a few hours a day, or the plant is too far to reach. An AMC you cannot service is worse than none. The first missed breakdown ends the contract, and the spares business with it.

Renewing a signed AMC is its own routine, set out in our note on selling and renewing AMC contracts.

For example: a pouch machine maker in Ambattur

Imagine a maker of form-fill-seal pouch machines in Ambattur, Chennai, with machines at spice, snack and sugar packing units across Tamil Nadu.

The maker kept no register. Installation reports sat in a cupboard, and the fitters' numbers were in the phone of a service engineer who had left. A spice unit in Erode, out of warranty, had its jaws copied by a local workshop. Seals leaked on the small-pack line, and the unit's owner told two other packers the machine was the problem. One of them was close to ordering.

The owner rebuilt the list from invoices and rang every plant. The owner asked each fitter what the machine was packing, what had been replaced and where it came from. Each fitter got a spares list with part numbers and photographs. The Erode unit got original jaws at cost and a visit from the engineer. The owner also rang the packer who was close to ordering, to explain what had gone wrong. Plants on two shifts with no trained fitter were offered an AMC. The rest got the price list and a call-out rate. Within a year, in this illustration, three plants were offered an AMC and one signed, the Erode unit bought its spares from the maker again, and the packer who was close to ordering bought a smaller machine, not the larger one first discussed.

What the register sells besides spares

Once the list exists, it answers other questions: which plants run three shifts and will soon need a second machine, and which models are old enough for a retrofit such as a new controller. Each is a reason to call that is not a pitch. Upselling and cross-selling from the installed base is one way to build those offers.

Start with the machines under warranty

Open the invoices for every machine sold in the last two years and make one register entry for each. Work from the warranty that ends soonest, because that buyer is about to choose between you and the workshop down the road. If you would like the register and the contact routine set up with you, tell us what you need.