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OEM Aftermarket and Service Readiness Assessment

Equipment builders often earn higher margins on parts and service than on new machines, but only if they know what they have delivered. This ten question assessment shows where your aftermarket business is strong and where the data and process gaps are.

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1. How well do you know which machines you have delivered and where they are now?

2. Do you hold an as-built bill of materials for each delivered machine?

3. How are spare parts quotes produced?

4. Do you track warranty start and end dates per machine?

5. What share of machines are covered by a paid service contract?

6. How are service calls and field visits recorded?

7. Do you analyse failure patterns across the fleet?

8. Can your service team see remote machine data or alarms?

9. Is service margin reported separately from machine sales?

10. How quickly can you answer a customer who asks what is in their machine and what it needs?

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How to use the assessment

Answer based on what is true today and evidenced in your systems, not on plans. Have the service lead and the finance lead answer separately, then compare. Large differences usually point to unreported work or unclear definitions. Retake it after six months to track change.

Answer from evidence
Compare service and finance views
Pick two actions, not ten
Retake every six months

What the score reflects

The questions run along the aftermarket chain: knowing the installed base, holding as-built configurations, quoting parts, tracking warranty, selling contracts, recording field work, learning from failures, monitoring remotely and measuring margin. A weak early link, such as the installed base, limits everything after it.

Reading your band

Foundation and reactive bands usually share one gap: serial level data. Fixing it unlocks warranty tracking, spares quoting and contract sales. In higher bands the work shifts to analytics and remote data. Be cautious about tooling before the data exists; a dashboard on bad records only displays the problem faster.

Common mistakes

Treating aftermarket as an add-on handled by a parts counter, so nobody owns the installed base. Others quote contract prices without costing field travel and spares. A third trap is separate spreadsheets in sales, service and finance that never agree on how many machines are in the field.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this assessment scientifically validated?

No. It is a practical self assessment built from common aftermarket practices. Use it to start a conversation and prioritise work, not as a benchmark against other companies.

What is an as-built BOM?

The record of what was actually installed in a specific machine, including substitutions and revisions, as opposed to the engineering BOM of the model. Service needs it to order the right part.

Do small OEMs need all of this?

Not necessarily. A small builder may do well with a serial-level spreadsheet, warranty dates and a simple parts list. Add systems only when the manual approach becomes the limit.

Where should we start?

Almost always with the installed base: serial number, customer, location, ship and commissioning dates. Everything else in the aftermarket chain depends on it.

If your score points to installed base and as-built data gaps, we can discuss how to link ERP, service and engineering records for read-only questions and reporting.

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