SKF has taken another leading position within its sector by creating two new and innovative service packages that address the rapidly changing needs of customers facing skills shortages, the challenges of global competition and market volatility, and the need to implement new manufacturing paradigms such as Industry 4.0.

The SKF Premium programme helps SKF bearing customers identify their maintenance and operational needs leading to a possible expenditure reduction. SKF Premium enables these customers to adopt the best maintenance practices for their critical assets, resulting in machine reliability and uptime improvement.

The initial offering rewards SKF bearing customers by providing a free Client Needs Analysis plus a free starter value pack of SKF Rotating Equipment Performance technology & services, subject to certain qualifying criteria. Further SKF Rotating Equipment Performance technology & services can also be added to the programme as required, offered on a fixed, monthly fee basis, removing the need for Capital investment.

The SKF Rotation For Life programme guarantees the reliability and availability of selected critical rotating machinery assets, reducing the Total Cost of Ownership for the customer over an agreed contract period. Delivered under a fixed monthly fee, the Rotation For Life service package focuses on agreed performance targets, and may include a spare parts and inventory management strategy review and a reliability engineering evaluation of the selected critical rotating equipment, as well as the long term supply of bearings.

SKF Rotation For Life incorporates a wide range of SKF capabilities, customized within a unique package for the specific customer need, which may include: bearing supply, lubrication management; seals; machine health products, remote diagnostic service and root cause failure analysis; quality inspection; mechanical services (e.g. bearing mounting/dismounting, remanufacturing); and training, etc.

Both the SKF Premium and SKF Rotation For Life offers are designed to help SKF bearing customers develop their digital and IoT strategies without placing demands on restricted capital investment programmes.

Commenting on the new offerings, Roberto Tommasi, Product Line Manager, Industrial digitalization and solutions at SKF says: “Companies are operating in a climate of change and uncertainty; restrictive capex budgets mean that critical production assets are not easily replaceable, so effective operation and maintenance is vital. These new programmes from SKF are designed to our bearing customers to deliver every facet of a well planned maintenance strategy with expert guidance available at every stage of the process.”