Concept for the Portfolio Management of Industrial Solution Providers in Machinery and Plant Engineering

Technical differentiation of products is becoming increasingly difficult for companies in the sector of machinery and plant engineering. As a result, companies are increasingly focusing on fulfilling individual customer benefits, which is leading to greater integration of services and software applications into their portfolios. This change is mostly accompanied by a shift from a transactional business model to selling individual value propositions. For this transformation into an industrial solution provider, it is necessary for the portfolio management of the companies to be adapted to the new conditions, as portfolio management has so far focused either on physical products or on services and software. Thus, this paper presents a concept for the portfolio management of industrial solution providers in machinery and plant engineering to enable an integrated view on all elements of the portfolio and to realize individual value propositions. For this purpose, the implications of the transformation on portfolio management and the resulting solutions are characterized. Subsequently, a procedure for the identification of criteria for establishing the portfolio as well as determining options for realizing the demanded solutions from the portfolio is elaborated.