SKF celebrates 10th year of confirmed customer savings with DSP

SKF is celebrating the first 10 years of its Documented Solutions Programme (DSP) which the company uses to measure the monetary value of the confirmed savings that its customers can make by using the company solutions.

SKF introduced the programme 10 years ago to demonstrate, in quantifiable terms, the value that it delivers to its customers. It collects and uploads information about a customer’s application into the DSP system, which gives SKF the ability to provide that customer with a bottom-line figure predicting the total estimated savings that it can achieve using SKF solutions. Later the customer confirms this figure when it has actually achieved these predicted savings.

SKF helps its customers to save in numerous ways using, for example, solutions that last longer and are more energy-efficient, or minimise machine downtime. Through DSP, customers have confirmed that SKF has saved them more than SEK 4 billion during 2013.

One of these customers, ArcelorMittal, acknowledges savings of SEK 17.7 million last year. SKF had used DSP to show the multinational steel company that it could achieve significant savings by remanufacturing discarded bearings and significantly reduce downtime by keeping replacement bearings in stock. Reducing the costs of maintenance and new bearings, as well as increasing the reliability of the equipment meant that ArcelorMittal achieved a return on investment of over 1,500 per cent.

“SKF’s DSP cases helped us to evaluate the benefits of making certain operational decisions, such as changes in consumptions/volumes and improved operating efficiency,” commented Frédéric Lourme, ArcelorMittal Global Buyer.

The savings confirmed by SKF customers since DSP began total more than SEK 27 billion.

“DSP lets our customers see the bigger picture. It shows them the total value that an SKF product or service will deliver to their business, rather than just looking at the initial cost of buying the solution.”

– Vartan Vartanian, President, SKF Industrial Market, Regional Sales and Service