Servitisation in Manufacturing: From Rolls‑Royce to Boulting Technology

Nick Boughton, Digital Lead at Boulting Technology

In 1962, engineering titan Rolls Royce pioneered servitisation with its Power‑by‑the‑Hour jet‑engine maintenance model, a service that lets operators pay for the power used rather than the engine itself. Celebrating its 55th anniversary in 2017, this approach has become a staple of the aerospace sector, demonstrating the long‑term viability of servitisation.

Here, Nick Boughton explains how this concept—selling solutions rather than products—can transform high‑volume, low‑margin manufacturing and other industries such as healthcare, automotive, and food processing.

Servitisation aligns the goals of providers and customers, fostering a partnership that focuses on performance and value rather than ownership.

Industry 4.0 and Servitisation

Companies like Siemens embed servitisation in their Industry 4.0 strategy, gathering data on a cloud platform that customers subscribe to on an as‑a‑service basis. Under this model, a factory can receive equipment—such as a motor—free of charge, paying only for its utilisation while the provider monitors the unit remotely to ensure peak efficiency.

Digitalisation also brings intelligence to legacy plants. Many facilities still operate 15‑to‑30‑year‑old machinery that, while functional, cannot communicate with modern systems. Modern “black‑box” retrofit solutions can be installed alongside this equipment, enabling integration with the network and visualising performance metrics for plant managers.

While many new products are designed for retrofitting, integrating older or obsolete machinery can be challenging. Engaging an experienced systems integrator, like Boulting Technology, helps evaluate feasibility and mitigate costly downtime.

Retrofitted digitalisation delivers predictive maintenance, asset tracking, condition monitoring, and energy measurement as a service, freeing maintenance engineers to focus on plant uptime rather than managing disparate schedules.

Traditional maintenance often forces engineers to juggle multiple machines, risking neglect of non‑critical equipment during busy periods. A detailed assessment, such as Boulting’s BRISK survey, offers a traffic‑light risk profile for each asset, providing a clear starting point for a risk‑based maintenance strategy.

Offering services like maintenance and digitalisation through retrofitting gives manufacturers—especially those in low‑margin, high‑volume sectors like food and beverage—a cost‑effective gateway to Industry 4.0.

Implications for Manufacturing

A plant manager prioritises equipment reliability, cost control, and energy efficiency. Servitisation enables them to purchase the energy or transportation needed—akin to Rolls Royce’s model—rather than the physical components, shifting the responsibility for delivery to the service provider.

Manufacturers must view their products as platforms that deliver ongoing service, not just hardware. With a manageable monthly budget, predictive data feeds can prevent costly downtime and optimise production schedules.

In summary, servitisation, coupled with the retrofitting of legacy equipment, unlocks Industry 4.0 benefits for high‑volume, low‑margin manufacturers, delivering tangible ROI through reduced downtime, energy savings, and improved asset utilisation.

The author of this blog is Nick Boughton, Digital Lead at Boulting Technology.